


zoom lens feelings

by somerdaye



Series: freeze frame 'verse [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 23:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somerdaye/pseuds/somerdaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam is a semi-professional photographer and Louis is a not-at-all professional model, and everything is Harry’s fault. It should not have taken me so many words to tell this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	zoom lens feelings

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: pining!liam, pseudo-intelligent photography jargon -- plus i feel like i should warn for the fact that there are no sex scenes, sorry about that.
> 
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAUREN. YOU ARE MY LOVE, MY LIFE, MY SOUUULLLMATE. or something along those lines.
> 
> the 'media inserts' were mostly made by marcel, and looked a hell of a lot better before ao3 refused to center them.

“You know,” Harry said through a mouthful of crisps, “my flatmate wants to get into modelling.”

Liam hummed noncommittally. He frowned -- the stamp tool was being uncooperative. No matter what size, opacity, or hardness he set it to, erasing Eleanor’s stray hairs just ending up looking weird. He barely noticed Harry was still talking.

“And, I mean, you don’t even have to pay him.”

“So, he’ll do it out of, what? The goodness of his heart?” Liam asked skeptically. He tried another setting.

“No, dumbass,” Harry said, perching himself on the desk so Liam had no choice but to see him in his peripheral vision. He wished his eyes worked like a camera, so he could focus on just his computer monitor.

“‘Dumbass’ isn’t really a term of endearment, y’know,” said Liam.

Harry raised his eyebrows. The look said _well, I’m not exactly endeared to you_. It worried Liam a bit that he could read Harry’s face so well.

“I don’t know why you’re being so cynical,” Harry said. “I’ve gotten you your best models out of the goodness of _my_ heart, haven’t I? Besides, Lou just wants practice. Like I said, you don’t even have to pay him.”

Normally, Liam would say no. If it were Niall asking he would definitely say no, because sometimes Niall was just too nice for his own good, and the truth of the matter was that not everyone had what it took to be a model, even if they were just modelling for something as small-time as what Liam did -- but Harry _had_ introduced him to Eleanor. Zayn, Caroline, and Aiden too.

“Fine,” he said, finally getting the hairs erased in a way that looked natural. “I’m not busy on Friday.”

“Cool,” Harry said. He stood up straight and left Liam’s line of vision, presumably to eat the rest of Liam’s crisps.

He didn’t seem very surprised but then, Liam supposed he really had no reason to. The day he was able to say no to Harry and stick by it was a long way off.

Whatever. He didn’t really think about it much in the days following anyway, busy as he was with attempting to format his site to include a category for Eleanor. He employed her enough that, hell, she deserved one. Except that he had no idea how to go about that, as Zayn was the one who usually muddled around with it, so he gave up and looked through his messages and emails. Quite frankly, it amazed him how positive the majority of the responses were. He remembered back when he was just a first-year photography student with a blog. Something -- luck, kismet, Niall’s connections -- had gotten him a sponsor in a small urban clothing chain, and suddenly he was getting paid to do what he loved most.

For a long time the only people he took pictures of were his sisters and his girlfriend at the time, Danielle. Then he’d met Harry in sociology, and he was way too pretty _not_ to photograph. It was a shame that Harry was incapable of staying still for extended periods of time, because he had such a good presence about him. Liam’s followers on his blog loved him, too -- a blurry picture of Harry laughing was likely to get thousands more notes than anything else he posted -- and the fact that he was so rarely photographed only seemed to raise their interest.

So, Liam had been frustrated and busy all week, and he was getting a bit stir-crazy. It was only the vague feeling that he’d made plans that kept him from jumping on the nearest train to anywhere.

Someone knocked on his door around noon on Friday, and he thought, _oh yeah_.

“Styles,” he grumbled to himself before he swung open the door. The bloke on the other side of it -- Lou, he assumed, unless Harry was sending more pretty boys to his place -- smiled brightly at him. Liam found himself very angry that he wasn’t able to be _more_ angry with Harry.

“Hi,” Lou said, waving a little. “You’re Liam?”

“Yes, and you’re...” Liam scrutinised the shape of his jaw, the colour of his eyes, the slightly-crooked smile, and said, “gorgeous.”

Lou laughed. “Most people call me Louis, but feel free to keep that up. My ego could always use a good boosting. Are you -- can I come in, or?”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” Liam stepped aside and let Harry’s latest masterpiece in.

“Have you got any lunch?” Louis asked, unwinding a knit scarf from his neck. Oh, but that would’ve been such a good shot. “I don’t want to be rude, but I’m starving. Hazza wasn’t home to make me food.”

“Couldn’t you make your own food?” Liam asked as he led Louis into the kitchen. Louis shrugged, which was the least graceful thing he’d done since entering Liam’s flat and for a moment, Liam was relieved. Then he raised his eyebrows, and Liam’s fingers itched to press the release on a phantom camera.

“Nah, I’m right lazy in the kitchen. Left to my own devices I tend to starve.”

“Well, I’m no Harry,” Liam said, checking his cupboards so he didn’t have to look at Louis. It was like looking directly into the sun. “But I can make a good ham sandwich.”

“Perfect,” Louis said.

He chatted amiably to Liam the whole time Liam’s back was turned; about the strange lady on the bus and how he hoped Harry was making tacos for dinner, that sort of thing. When Liam looked at him again, he almost dropped the plate.

Like, all Louis was doing was _sitting_ , yeah, all sprawled out on one of Liam’s spindly chairs, but it looked so much like he was posing.

“Are you doing that on purpose?” Liam asked, eyes narrowing.

Louis looked genuinely confused. “Doing what?”

“Never mind.” Liam sighed, passive-aggressively putting the plate down in front of Louis. “Here’s your sandwich. Want a tea?”

“Love one,” Louis grinned.

Liam’s hands shook as he prepared the mugs, which was -- it was ridiculous. It wasn’t like Louis was the single best-looking guy Liam had ever come across (that title belonged to Zayn), but something in the way he moved was _fascinating_.

“Harry said this is, like, practice for you,” Liam said as he waited for the water to boil. “So I take it you haven’t done any sort of modelling before?”

“Yeah, unless you count amateur fashion shows with my baby sisters, this’ll be my first go.”

That was extremely hard for Liam to believe, but he couldn’t really think of any reason that Louis might lie.

“I hope you cut me some slack,” Louis added.

Liam poured their tea, chuckling. “I’ve got a lot of patience. Milk or sugar?”

“Three sugars, thanks.”

After setting the teas on the table, Liam hesitated. He wasn’t hungry, but he also didn’t want to sit there twiddling his thumbs while Louis ate his sandwich, so he grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter. When he sat down, Louis was smiling at him.

“What?”

“Felt weird with just me eating, huh?” he asked, and Liam grimaced.

“Am I that obvious?” He put the apple aside to link his fingers together. Louis nodded, chewing thoughtfully, and Liam took the opportunity of conversation to stare at his bone structure.

“You don’t have a great poker face, no,” he said after he’d swallowed.

Already he had more manners than Harry and Niall combined. How refreshing. Liam didn’t really know what to respond with, but Louis seemed happy enough ending the conversation there. He ate while Liam -- well, twiddled his thumbs. Occasionally Liam took a sip of his tea, but it was scalding.

Shoving the last bit of crust in his mouth, Louis stood and brought his plate to the sink. It wasn’t until he turned the faucet on that Liam clued in.

“Oh, you don’t have to,” Liam protested, half-standing.

“Shut up,” Louis laughed. “Harry told me you were nice, yeah, and you are, but I’m not going to take _too_ much advantage of that, alright? It’s just a dish.” The real question was: had Harry said ‘nice’ or ‘a pushover’? Liam was pretty sure he knew which.

Louis finished washing his plate and put it into the nearest cupboard. It wasn’t the right place, but, well, Liam wasn’t keen on pointing that out. He’d move it to its proper cupboard after Louis went home.

“So,” Louis said, turning and leaning back against the counter. “What’ll you have me do?”

“Well, er,” said Liam, “just get you in front of the camera, I suppose. See how comfortable you are... if you’re able to _stand still_ or if you fidget incessantly like Harry does. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds good -- where?”

“Oh, uh, I use the spare room as a makeshift studio when I don’t feel like taking the bus to Niall’s. So, you can, er, go on in. If you like. I need to get my camera.” Louis said ‘okay’ and did what Liam suggested, and Liam took the temporary reprieve to text Harry.

 

****

 

Now, Liam wasn’t exactly _proud_ of his home ‘studio’, but it was still just the tiniest bit offensive when Louis said, “This looks like a place porn is shot in”, upon Liam’s entrance.

Liam looked around, frowning, and -- okay, yeah, everything was white and the camera equipment was shoved into a corner, lights everywhere because Niall didn’t know how to put things away, but that didn’t mean it was a porn studio, for god’s sake. Still, he didn’t think Louis was poking fun at his lifestyle on _purpose_ , so he tried not to let it bother him.

“Sorry,” he said, “no porn.” Then he paused, and a horrible thought occurred to him. “That... I know of, in any case.” Harry and Niall weren’t allowed in here alone anymore. Now that the idea was planted in his head, it was hard to bleach it out.

Louis chuckled and turned from the window, which was covered with a white sheet of bristol board.

“Is that your camera?” he asked -- his question a bit redundant, in Liam’s opinion. “It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, “it’s my baby. And, well, thank you, but... how much do you really know about cameras?”

“Granted, not much,” said Louis, shoving his hands into his pockets. “But, er, that’s a D700, is it not? Probably wasn’t totally worth the amount you spent on it -- the higher megapixel count doesn’t make that much of a difference in regular photographs -- but you love it anyway. Am I warm?”

“I -- spot on, actually.”

Liam felt a bit bad. He’d assumed that Louis, like everyone else he’d worked with, wouldn’t know anything about his baby. He smiled awkwardly, trying to smooth the moment over. Before he could ask where Louis learned that, or if he knew any more, Louis asked where he was supposed to stand.

He was pretty obviously avoiding the subject, but he was also just plain pretty, so Liam let it go, setting Louis up for the first shot.

“Stand over there, please,” Liam said, pointing at the far wall. There was already a light set up beside it, beauty dish attached and everything, and for once he was glad that Niall was lazier than anyone he’d ever met. It was less work for him to do now. “And you can just do what you like, it doesn’t really matter.”

“Am I allowed to talk to you?” Louis asked. Liam flicked on the light and shook his head. In response, Louis pouted -- Liam snapped a picture on the premise of testing the strobe. “Well, will you talk to me, then? Just standing in silence is a bit weird.”

Talking. Okay, not Liam’s strong suit. Still, he wanted Louis to be comfortable, so he did what he was asked to. He talked about how much he hated html and also Spain, because that’s where Zayn had disappeared to for holiday, and would it kill Harry to wear trousers at Niall’s as he was scaring off potential sponsors. It was easy, then, to start rambling about how much better his studio in Niall’s basement was, and from there it turned to photography jargon in general.

It was about seventy shots later that he realised he was babbling, too distracted by all the subtle changes in Louis’ expression as he listened that he hadn’t paid attention to what was actually coming out of his mouth.

“Oh, man,” he said, not lowering his camera. It was better to keep his face hidden. “I’m sorry. I usually know how to shut up.”

“It’s fine,” Louis said, quick, like he was worried about getting a scolding for talking. When Liam didn’t start in on him, he grinned widely. Liam pressed the trigger like his life depended on it. “I understood about ninety percent of it, anyway.”

“I’m really very surprised that you do,” Liam said. Understatement. It was new, to say the least, having someone make sense of his babble. Not even Niall really _got_ the camera stuff, let alone any of the models.

“I’m more than just a pretty face, you know.”

Louis said it like a joke, but Liam was only just getting used to how pretty he was. He didn’t need hidden layers or casual knowledge of photography to contend with, too. If Louis was secretly insecure, played piano, and/or owned reading glasses, Liam was going to have real heart palpitations.

“Sorry, yeah,” he said, playing with the aperture. “I’m just -- _really_ not used to beautiful people knowing anything about cameras. I mean, usually you’re in front of it. Case in point.”

At that moment, Liam was trying to zoom in on Louis’ eyes without physically stepping closer because, you know, awkward, so he had a good view of the lines that creased Louis’ eyebrows. He didn’t know why the frown appeared, but it was strangely attractive, so he continued snapping pictures like nothing was wrong. Louis stood in silence for at least three minutes before caving.

“Do you own a mirror?” he asked, sounding more annoyed than Liam thought he had any right to. “Because you’re fairly beautiful yourself, mate.”

“I’m --” Liam choked on a laugh. “Okay, no, I’m really not. I mean, thank you, but... like, I know what ‘beautiful’ looks like. I sort of have an eye for it, you know, being a semi-professional photographer and all, and, no. _You’re_ beautiful.” He was so grateful for the camera hiding his blush from Louis’ piercing eyes. “Harry is beautiful. Eleanor and Caroline are beautiful. Zayn is -- well, the most beautiful bloke I’ve ever met, no contest. I’m... not. Now stop talking, you’re messing me up.” Liam bit his lip to stop the flood of words.

Louis’ jaw kind of clenched, and it looked really good -- like most of Louis’ expressions did, at least the ones Liam had seen -- so Liam didn’t tell him off. Neither of them talked for some time, but it seemed that the longer Louis stood there, the more irritated he became. At first Liam didn’t mind, but when Louis started to full-on glare at the camera, he thought it was time to intervene.

“Is something the matter?”

“Jesus,” Louis groaned, right before he stomped over to Liam and held his hand out. “Give me the bloody camera. Go stand where I was. I will _prove_ this to you.”

He laughed, thinking that maybe Louis was joking. He lived with Harold, master of deadpan teasing, after all, but no such luck. Louis looked so stubborn that Liam was positive he wouldn’t be able to leave the room without giving in.

He hesitated before handing his baby over. He’d never really let anyone use it before, but Louis knew more about cameras than Niall did, so it was only with slight trepidation that Liam placed it carefully in Louis’ hands.

Louis pushed him to the wall and immediately started snapping pictures, which was disconcerting.

Liam’s limbs felt like they weighed a thousand pounds each. How was he supposed to stand? Had he closed his mouth yet or was he still gaping like a simpleton? What shutter speed was Louis using? Why was he suddenly so aware of how much he blinked?

God, he was bad at this.

He felt a whole lot of sympathy for everyone he shot regularly, now. Standing completely still was _impossible_ , like there was a permanent twitch in his left shoulder, and his foot itched like mad. How the hell did they do it? Now he understood why Harry was so frustrating to work with -- this end of the lens was pretty damn frustrating, too.

“Okay, can we stop?” he asked, crossing his arms across his chest. “That’s enough, yeah? I suck so, so bad at this. Louis. Please stop taking pictures of me.”

“If you’re really that bothered,” Louis said, “then by all means, leave. It’s your house, it’s a free country. I can’t stop you.”

Liam huffed and glared at the floor underneath Louis’ feet. Of course he wore TOMS, he probably gave a shit about the kids they were allegedly helping, too, because that was just Liam’s luck. Honestly, he was more irritated by the fact that Louis had a point -- it would be easy enough to walk away, or kick Louis out, but Liam was rooted to the spot. Louis himself was just so interesting that Liam wasn’t ready to let the session end, so he grinned -- or grimaced, he wasn’t very good at controlling his facial muscles -- and fixed his eyes on a point over Louis’ shoulder.

Dumb of him to assume that anyone Harry lived with would be anything but aggravating. Aggravating and beautiful, and a natural in front of a camera, in jeans that were far too tight. Also, what if Liam could get Louis and Zayn in the same shoot? His blog would explode. It would be nice to put Louis’ face on his website, too...

Oh, but he wanted to offer Louis a job. The only issue was: money. Liam didn’t have enough to take on _another_ model.

He very badly wanted to, though. He’d have a talk with Harry later -- after yelling at him for either keeping Louis to himself or for Louis existing in the first place, Liam hadn’t decided -- and Harry could chew him out for being so dumb with his money.

Without Harry to manage his revenue and Niall to be a glorified assistant or Zayn to fix his site whenever it crashed, Liam would be a broken man. Considering he paid them very little, they certainly put up with a lot of his shit.

“Could you look at the camera for me, Li?” Louis asked, and Liam was so shocked by the nickname that he did.

“Oh,” he said, blinking the spots out of his vision. Louis had raised the amount of light; he bet the images were going to be blown out.

Louis lowered the camera, smirking, and Liam wished he had a way to capture _that_. Sadly, he was empty-handed still. “There you go, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“I hate you,” Liam said without heat. Louis raised a hand to his chest and staggered back, mock-offended. He looked like he could be an actor, too, which just made Liam all the more resentful. How could one person be so good at so many things, and be gorgeous on top of all that? It didn’t seem fair to mere mortals like himself.

“I ought to be going,” Louis said, checking his phone. “Apparently Hazza’s bringing me for dinner. He says it’s a surprise, but I think it’s just Nando’s. Again.”

“Right,” said Liam. “Have fun and all that.”

Handing Liam’s camera back over to him, Louis winked.

“Just because I made you feel awkward for all of ten minutes doesn’t mean you have to be all surly. Trust me, I’m the king of making people feel awkward. Zayn often avoids me like the plague.”

Liam did a double-take. “You know Zayn?”

“Of course I know Zayn,” Louis said. He grabbed the sleeve of Liam’s jumper to lead him out of the room while he talked. “I know all of Harry’s friends.”

“Except me,” Liam pointed out.

Louis nodded. “Yeah, ‘cept you. I wonder why that is.”

Liam didn’t get a chance to wonder out loud, because they’d reached the front door and Louis was winding his scarf around his neck before Liam could collect his thoughts.

“See you later,” Louis said before ducking out, and Liam really hoped so. He didn’t want to wake up tomorrow and find out that it was a dream, or that Harry had hired an actor to be wonderful and cheeky and pretty.

It sounded like something Harry might do.

Liam had a shrewd suspicion as to why Harry had never introduced them before, but he didn’t mention it. Harry’s friends were Liam’s friends now, that was just the way things had turned out, and he’d have known how stupid Liam would get over Louis. Probably he just wanted to have a friend that was just _his_. God knew that Liam didn’t have any.

Harry _was_ that friend for a while -- a couple of months, at least. Liam wasn’t selfish or possessive of his friends or whatever, but it was pretty disheartening to learn that Harry had a boyfriend and several very good friends, all of whom were funny and nice and generally good to hang around.

See, Liam loved Niall. He loved Zayn, and Eleanor. He was a bit intimidated by Caroline and Aiden, but that was only to be expected. They were all great friends, but they weren’t _his_. They were _his and Harry’s_ ; and Harry was _his and everyone else’s_ , only more so the _everyone else’s_. So he didn’t blame Harry one bit for hiding Louis away, for being selfish, because Liam would’ve done the same if Louis was his flatmate.

 

****

 

Liam was, in general, a very patient person.

He sort of had to be -- and so, as he’d recently learned, did his models -- to stand in an all-white room for hours on end without tearing his hair from his skull. It was a learned skill, staying in the same spot without fidgeting and, usually, he was pretty good at it.

Except that the muscles in his leg were jumping so much that it was practically vibrating, because Louis was meeting him for coffee.

Not _coffee_ -coffee, purely a business-coffee sort of meeting, but still. He was nervous.

Just as he was considering how strange it would look if he gave himself a dead leg in the middle of the coffee shop, Louis slid into the seat across from him with a brilliant smile.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, shaking snowflakes out of his fringe.

Liam was too stunned to speak for a moment. God bless December. By the time he’d found his voice, Louis’ smile had faded.

“Oh, er, you’re not late, though.”

“Am I not? Oh, good. I’m so used to showing up late to things that it’s safest to just open with the apology.” Louis chuckled, and Liam thought that he should probably join in, but he liked the sound of Louis’ laugh too much to mar it with his own.

“Well, you’re right on time today,” Liam said once he was sure Louis was done.

“Cool,” Louis said, smiling again. “I’ll go get the coffees and then you can talk at me about... whatever. Harry was pretty vague about the topic.” He stood up and was out of Liam’s line of vision as quickly as he’d arrived.

Liam was thankful for the chance to catch his breath. In the five days since he’d met Louis, he’d been trying to convince himself that Louis wasn’t so great. He’d almost started to believe it, even with Harry constantly singing his praises -- like he had to tell Liam a year’s worth of Louis stories to make up for never mentioning him before -- but Louis’ smile and eye crinkles and flushed cheeks from the cold were like a punch to the lungs, reminding Liam how gorgeous he was.

“I’ve got a theory,” he’d said to Harry the night before, ignoring the ‘it could be bunnies’ that Harry shot back with, “that Louis is actually perfect.”

He didn’t think he’d imagined the pleased little smirk Harry was sporting when he said, “is that so?”, but he couldn’t figure out what it might mean, so he’d self-consciously changed the subject to Harry and Niall’s eighteen-month anniversary.

Now he was pondering the smirk again, but he didn’t get to ponder for long before Louis was back.

“I guessed,” Louis said, placing one of the cups in front of Liam. “I was going to ask what you wanted, but then I was lazy, so... I hope it tastes okay.”

Liam took a sip and almost did a spit-take out of pure amusement. “Um, Louis, this is hot chocolate, not coffee.”

“Hot chocolate seemed safer,” Louis said sheepishly.

That was the second time Louis had used the word ‘safe’ since he first sat down, and it was starting to worry Liam. Did he seem the sort of person who needed to be tiptoed around? Anger issues were Aiden’s forté, not Liam’s. Not exactly something that could be easily brought up in conversation, though, so he just took another sip of his hot chocolate and tried not to frown.

Louis seemed comfortable enough with the silence, a concept Liam wasn’t entirely used to. Niall and Harry together were a nightmare of noise, and Zayn, who seemed quiet at first, was now the loudest person Liam knew. God, he hoped Louis wouldn’t surprise him like that, too.

“So I asked you here,” Liam finally said, tired of squirming under Louis’ gaze, “to tell you that I’m really sorry, but Hazza tells me I don’t have the money to actually hire you.”

“Oh,” Louis said. “Okay.”

“You’re not... upset?”

“Should I be? Look, I don’t need to be _paid_ , Li, jeez.” (If that nickname was sticking, Liam was going to need an inhaler or something.) “Anyway, shouldn’t you wait to see if any of your sponsors like me first? That would be the responsible thing to do.”

“I,” said Liam. His voice cut off, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “I literally can’t see any reason why they wouldn’t.”

Louis didn’t blush, but then, Louis didn’t seem the type to blush, so maybe the averting-his-eyes-and-biting-his-lip move was his alternative. He looked really precious, but Liam thought it might be rude if he took his camera out of his bag to start taking pictures. Okay, more ‘creepy’ than ‘rude’, but semantics, right?

To stop Louis from staring into his coffee, Liam added, “I’m just... not really comfortable taking up a bunch of your time without paying you, y’know? Like, I definitely want to do another session with you if you don’t mind, but... money.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Louis said, not meeting his eyes. “Feed me and let me stay at yours when Hazza has Niall over and that’ll be more than enough payment.”

Really? Did that just actually --? Liam pinched himself discreetly and, yep, he was just told that in return for getting the chance to stare at Louis’ face through a lens for hours, he also got the chance to have Louis stay on his sofa every once in a while. Neither of which were exactly hardships in Liam’s opinion -- but maybe they were to Louis.

“Yeah, I -- that’ll be fine. Come over whenever you like, I’m generally home.”

Louis grinned happily, and maybe it wasn’t such a hardship for him, either. “Awesome. Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I figured I’d do some Christmas shopping while I’m downtown, yeah?”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Liam said. “It was nice seeing you.”

“Are you, um --” Louis stood up and hesitated. “I mean... you can come with, if you like. I don’t mind.”

Well aware that Harry was going to kill him, Liam made up some excuse about meeting Caroline in a couple of hours anyway, and he needed to shower because _you know how Caroline is, scary as fuck_ , and he didn’t feel even a twinge of regret watching Louis walk away. The very last thing he wanted to do was embarrass himself further -- he needed to, like, store a vial of Louis’ attractiveness and build up an immunity before he could spend prolonged amounts of time in his company.

He’d get there eventually, he was sure. As it was, he had to force himself not to skip home. Louis had such a strange effect on him and, yeah, he was fairly certain the guy was _perfect_.

Pining? No. No, Liam was not, in any way, pining after a bloke he barely knew.

 

****

 

Before meeting Harry the previous February, there were a lot of things Liam wouldn’t have done. Ever. He’d never even tried vodka before being introduced to Niall -- and subsequently he never would’ve learned how to make a killer bacon sandwich as part of Niall’s patented hangover cure. Marijuana was something foreignly bad, not a nice way to relax every once in a while; cherry stems were for _cherries_ , not for being tied into a necklace by Harry’s tongue; and Danielle might never have decided he was a good enough boyfriend to keep around.

Possibly most of all, the Liam from a year ago would have never considered opening his front door in nothing but his pants, but since he was lucky if Harry _wore_ pants it didn’t seem like the biggest deal in the world. Until he actually opened his door, and it wasn’t Harry or Niall or Aiden behind it.

“Oh,” Louis said, eyes drifting down Liam’s body and snapping back up again. “Oh.”

“Er, hello,” said Liam.

Common courtesy suggested that he invite Louis in and/or put on some clothes, but Liam barely remembered his own middle name right then, let alone manners. Louis tried several times to keep looking Liam in the eye, and then apparently gave up and stared at the ceiling. It was probably Liam’s turn to say something, like maybe, ‘you’ve got the wrong flat I’m Liam’s perverted twin brother Ian’, but he couldn’t make his mouth work.

Eventually, Louis burst out laughing. “Sorry, sorry, I just -- it’s Harry and Niall’s anniversary, yeah, and I got sexiled, so I thought I’d stay at yours because of the standing invitation and then I didn’t have your phone number and if this is a bad time I can stay at Eleanor’s oh my god I’m sorry --” he cut himself off with another round of giggles, which Liam resented.

“You can come in,” Liam said, blushing furiously. “I thought you were Harry, so I didn’t...”

“Bother putting clothes on? Yeah, I get that, Hazza does inspire nudity. If I come in do you promise to find a shirt?” Louis’ eyes were still fixed upwards, his sentences broken up by huffs of laughter.

Liam went from embarrassed to disgruntled at the speed of light.

“Yes, I’ll put on a shirt,” he said. “Sorry to have, whatever, offended you with my body. Come on in.”

“Have I offended _you_?” Louis asked, stepping inside and closing the door behind him. Liam didn’t bother responding, he just grabbed his Superman shirt from the armchair and tugged it on. Good enough. The closest pair of trousers were all the way in his bedroom.

“No, no, not at all, I just --” Liam crossed his arms across his chest. “I don’t know. I just -- I work out, you know, and it’s not like I’ve got anything to be ashamed of, right, so --”

“Okay, stopping you there,” Louis said, holding his hands up.

“Stopped.”

“You’re right, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of,” said Louis, “but it’s really hard to think when you’re walking around like that _in the middle of December_ , because now I’m wondering if I could beat you in an arm-wrestling match or, more importantly, a thumb-wrestling match, and how much can you bench-press? Never mind, I don’t want to know, just keep the shirt on and I’ll be happy.”

“Oh, so I’m making you feel inadequate?”

Louis made an aborted groaning noise and walked into the kitchen. Liam didn’t follow him, but he heard Louis muttering to himself as he clanged around in the cupboards. Not a full minute later, Louis came back out with a Pop-Tart, glaring daggers at Liam.

“You’re a bit of an asshole, aren’t you?” he asked in a barbed voice.

He wasn’t. Not usually, but he was having trouble figuring out how to deal with Louis. If he let on how kind of flawless he thought Louis was, it might be misconstrued as creepy.

So he shrugged and said, “I’m not the one who just raided another person’s kitchen without permission.”

“Sorry,” Louis said, voice dripping with sarcasm as he held up the Pop-Tart. “Do you mind if I eat this, Li _am_?”

“I don’t mind at all. I’m going to be working, though, so I hope you’re not expecting any sort of entertainment,” Liam said, raising his eyebrows. Louis immediately looked to the DVD case.

“Fine, I’ll entertain myself.”

Liam sat on the sofa with his laptop, playing with photoshop and ordering pizza, while Louis rifled around his movie collection. He’d just poked Zayn on Facebook -- he really missed the bastard -- when Louis made a triumphant noise and pulled a DVD from its place.

“What’re you watching, then?” Liam asked, like he wasn’t actually burning to know.

“Toy Story,” Louis said.

Yeah, there was no way Liam was going to be able to keep up this whole pretending-he-didn’t-think-Louis-was-the-greatest-thing-since-jelly-doughnuts thing up. Toy Story was literally his favourite movie of all time, and he was glad, not for the first time, that his thoughts were private, because the word ‘destiny’ was bouncing around in them at that moment.

He closed his laptop and grinned up at a surprised Louis. “You like Toy Story? Do you prefer Buzz or Woody, because that’s an essential pillar in our potential friendship.”

“I...” Louis said. He frowned down at the DVD like it knew why Liam’s mood had done a 180. “I didn’t realise we _had_ a potential friendship.” Ouch. “But, uh, I guess I’d have to go with Buzz. He’s badass.”

“No, you can’t go with Buzz!”

Liam chose to ignore the beginning of Louis’ sentence, because it felt a lot like a slap in the face, and instead let himself ramble about why Woody was _so much better_ until Louis started smiling. Okay, so he’d found one thing wrong with Louis -- he liked Buzz Lightyear. That was totally something Liam could get past.

When he was (mostly) finished, Louis asked, “So your main interests are photography and Toy Story?”

“Yeah,” Liam said, unashamed. “Toy Story is to me what Power Rangers is to Zayn. And if you know Zayn, you understand.”

“I fucking _love_ Power Rangers,” said Louis excitedly. It took Liam longer than he was proud of to realise that Louis wasn’t doing a poor imitation of Zayn, but was, rather, speaking his own thoughts on the matter.

“I can see why Harry introduced the two of you,” Liam said.

Louis nodded, plopping down on the sofa. He wasn’t anywhere near Liam, but the hairs on Liam’s arms still stood on end just knowing that if Louis wanted to, they _could_ be touching. “Hazza’s really good at that, isn’t he? Everyone he’s introduced me to, I’ve gotten on with really well.”

“Me too.” Liam frowned at the colourful DVD menu; Harry hadn’t introduced him to Louis, and he must’ve had a reason. He knew that Harry saw social interaction as a downright science.

“You’re kind of bipolar, aren’t you?” Louis asked, the main titles playing across the screen.

The movie started then, and Liam managed to avoid answering the question. It was probably the simplest answer, though, wasn’t it? ‘Yeah, I’m bipolar’ would be more socially acceptable than ‘actually I’m starting to fancy you quite a lot and I’m trying to figure out what you want me to be’. So far, Liam could cross ‘douchebag’ off that list. Which was good -- he was about as good at being mean as Niall was at gymnastics.

He wasn’t going to mention _that_ , let alone while Toy Story was on, so he settled in to watch the movie.

For a while, it was easy to forget how much he liked Louis. The pizza came and Liam got up to answer the door, because they were fairly certain yelling ‘come in’ wouldn’t work. They ate it on the floor so Liam’s sofa didn’t get any more pizza sauce stains, and before the final scene Louis had literally fallen asleep on Liam.

Liam before he met Harry would’ve freaked out, a crush’s head on his thighs, but since Harry and, by extension, Zayn, had come into his life, there was no part of him that hadn’t been used as a pillow at least once.

Plus, he was sleepy and full of pizza and he wasn’t Toy Story 2’s biggest fan, so instead of putting it in he stretched out on the floor, careful not to displace Louis’ head, and let himself fall asleep. His last coherent thought was how much he was going to regret sleeping on the hardwood floor in the morning.

Shockingly enough, every bit of him ached when he came to, sun directly in his eyes.

“Should really invest in some curtains,” he muttered. When he sat up, he realised that Louis was gone -- a sticky note on Liam’s bare thigh in his place.

It took all of Liam’s willpower not to call Harry and ask what it all meant. This sort of stuff, the talking to people and deducing if they like you back stuff, was completely Harry’s area of expertise. Except Harry was probably still sleeping after all the anniversary celebrations Liam was trying so hard not to think about.

He felt like a bit of a girl, dropping the Post-It in an empty shoebox. Just so he could show it to Harry later, he told himself -- unconvincingly.

Okay, he thought, shoving the box under his bed so he wouldn’t maim himself tripping over it later. He was getting _really_ stupid over Louis, but who could blame him? The guy was actually free of flaws.

Harry never saw the note, but Liam would go to his grave swearing he was saving it for Harry’s benefit.

 

****

 

“Zayn’s coming home tomorrow.”

Liam looked up from Harry’s laptop, which was frustratingly slower than his own. “Is he?”

From his seat on the sofa, Niall nodded. He had a bag of candy beside him, Liam’s peace offering for asking to use their computer while his own was in the shop; an unwatched football game was muted on the telly, and Liam couldn’t help thinking that if Harry showed up now with beer, Niall would be the happiest guy in all of Britain.

“Yeah,” Niall said. “He’s coming for Christmas dinner.”

“Niall, tomorrow is December 19th.”

“I’m aware of that, Liam, I own a calendar. It’s the Bieber one -- hint, hint, I still have yet to get the 2013 calendar.” Niall threw a jellybean, hitting the side of Liam’s neck with stunning accuracy. “I’m going to Mullingar for the hols, so Haz and I are having our own Christmas dinner.”

“And you didn’t invite me?” Liam asked in mock-offense. Okay, real offense, but he at least attempted to hide it.

Another jellybean. This time Liam tried -- and failed -- to catch it in his mouth.

Niall sniggered. “Do you ever actually read your event invites on Facebook, or do you just automatically click the ‘maybe’ button?”

“The second one,” Liam admitted. He logged into Facebook so he could read it for himself.

“Shame on you, Liam Payne,” said Niall. “Those aren’t the manners your mother raised you with, are they?”

“Well, it’s all house parties and stuff I don’t care about.”

Niall made a movement like he was going to stand -- to hit Liam, probably, for insinuating that he didn’t care about Niall’s ‘legendary’ house parties -- but thought better of it. The sofa was, like, his favourite place in the house.

That sofa was actually where Liam had first met Niall. Harry had invited him to a party of Niall’s, and Liam wasn’t about to turn down an offer from the only college friend he’d made, no matter how much he _loathed_ parties. When he got there, looking for Harry, he was pointed to the living room. Harry had been there, all right, straddling Niall’s lap like there weren’t a bunch of people milling around.

“Liam,” Harry had exclaimed, grinning drunkenly up at him while a blonde boy sucked at his jaw. “Babe, this is Liam. Liam, this is my sort-of boyfriend Niall.”

Later, Liam learned that despite Harry’s tacked on ‘sort-of’, the two had been dating for several months. Which, from other things he learned later, seemed to be some kind of miracle. He learned a lot after that night, actually, everything he could possibly want or need to know about Harry and Niall and Harry-and-Niall.

“Are you going to come, or what?” Niall asked, jerking Liam back to the present.

“Is Harry going to cook?”

“Mostly.”

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

Niall made a noise of outrage, throwing jellybeans like a madman. Liam didn’t stand a chance -- he covered his head and waited for the attack to end. When it did, he asked, “So, who’s all going to be there?” Judging by Niall’s expression, he hadn’t pulled off the question as casually as he’d have liked.

“You. Zayn. El said she might stop by.”

Liam deflated. “That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Niall said with an undignified snort. “It’s a dinner, for god’s sake, not a party. I thought you’d be pleased, you hate people.”

“I am. So pleased. People suck.”

The issue, Liam thought, with knowing Niall so well, was that Niall knew him just as well. Possibly better, because Niall cared about people in a way that Liam had never been trained to. Liam knew how to be polite, but he didn’t know how to _care_ about strangers.

“Lou’s picking up a double shift at the restaurant,” Niall said around the remaining jellybeans, “so he can get his birthday off.”

“Restaurant?” Liam thought Louis worked at Tesco’s.

As if he could read Liam’s mind, Niall was quick to say, “Lou goes through jobs ridiculously fast. If he told you he -- if he was working somewhere else last time you spoke to him, he wasn’t lying. He just... got fired since then.”

Liam wanted to know 1) when Louis’ birthday was, because that seemed like the sort of crucial information a borderline stalker needed and 2) who would be idiotic enough to fire Louis. He didn’t ask either of those things, thankfully, because just then the telltale crashes and thumps that signaled Harry’s arrival came.

“Hey, babe,” Harry called from the kitchen.

“Hi, sweetie,” Liam yelled back before Niall could. Niall looked distressed when he realised he’d eaten all the ammo.

Harry stuck his head around the corner, all curls and dimples. “Oh, hey, Liam. I didn’t know you were over. You coming to dinner tomorrow?”

“I am,” Liam said.

He would never get over how happy simple things like that made Harry. Actually, he’d never get over how happy his very presence seemed to make Harry -- the kid had so many friends that choosing a party every weekend was legitimately a hassle for him, and Liam was... well, Liam.

“Bring presents,” Harry advised. Then, he frowned. “What’s up with the jellybean explosion?”

 

****

 

Liam was legitimately surprised, walking into Niall’s house, by the smell of roast and potatoes cooking. He hadn’t been entirely sure that ‘Christmas dinner’ with the boys wasn’t going to end up being Nandos. He propped a hand up against the kitchen doorframe so he wouldn’t fall over while he pulled his boots off. Harry was inside the kitchen, stirring something in a large pot.

“Is Zayn here yet?” Liam asked. Harry must have heard him come in, but he still jumped a little. He had an apron on that said KISS THE COOK -- HE’S IRISH! which Liam thought was all kinds of false advertising.

“Nice to see you _too_ , Liam,” Harry said with a sniff.

“I saw you yesterday,” said Liam. “And wow, you can do ‘posh’ ridiculously well.”

“I wasn’t... trying... Zayn’s in the bedroom.”

“Seducing your boyfriend?”

“I hope not,” Harry said mildly, peeking in the oven. “We agreed that having Zayn in bed would just make both of us all insecure and no fun would be had by anyone. If we were going to have a threesome we’d ask you. You’re actually in our league.”

In Harry’s league? _Don’t make me laugh_ , Liam thought but didn’t say aloud in fear of the conversation continuing into a very awkward place. “Please don’t.”

Harry shrugged. “Your loss.”

A good as time as any to duck out, Liam thought. Neither Harry nor Niall had bothered decorating anything, which was just as well -- Liam wasn’t big on celebrations. Niall’s bedroom was in the attic or, as Harry called it, the ‘loft’. Liam tended to avoid going up there unnecessarily; it smelled like sweat and laundry detergent and dude. Plus, he always had the irrational fear that he was about to walk in on something straight out of porn.

“I’m coming up,” Liam called when he was halfway up the steep staircase. “I hope everyone’s clothed!”

He heard a scuffle and a thump, like someone had fallen off the bed. He looked into the open landing warily, preparing himself for the worst. Was this all an elaborate ruse to trick him into a three-way? Did Zayn even currently exist in the UK?

No, it wasn’t -- and yes, he did.

“Hey, babe,” Zayn said, sprawled across Niall’s bed like he owned it. The actual owner was half on the floor and not even really trying to get back up.

“Zayn.” Liam knew he had the stupidest grin on his face, but his friends were mirroring it right back at him, so he didn’t feel too embarrassed about it. “I missed you, man.”

Before he flopped onto the bed with them, Liam helped Niall get his upper body back onto the mattress in case he got brain damage or something. He engulfed Zayn in a proper hug as soon as that was dealt with, and he could hear Niall being sarcastic by his left ear, but he wasn’t listening.

Zayn’s scruff was itchy against Liam’s cheek, but he still felt like _Zayn_ , which was a weird revelation to have. Who else would he have felt like? It wasn’t as if Spain had the kind of technology to replace him with a clone within a month. As far as Liam knew, that was. Niall made a noise, a sort of whine, and wrapped his arms around both of them. Liam hadn’t taken off his jacket or scarf and was quickly overheating, but who cared?

“I should warn you guys,” Liam said, voice muffled in Zayn’s hoodie, “if we have sex without Haz, he’ll be pissed.”

“He would be,” Niall confirmed.

“Wait, did the three of you merge into some kind of super-couple while I was gone?” Zayn asked, his voice all amused and fond and just that little bit exasperated that reminded Liam he didn’t always have to be the grown-up. “If so, that doesn’t seem fair.”

“No,” Niall laughed. “Liam’s still avoiding our e-vites.”

If that was a joke, Liam couldn’t tell. Maybe he really ought to check his Facebook event invitations more often. What if he’d accidentally _Maybe_ ’d a threesome with his best friends? That would be just his luck.

Just in case it wasn’t another take-the-mick-out-of-Liam-the-Easy-Target situation, he said, “Answer’s no, Nialler, sorry.”

Niall was supremely unconcerned, but Liam was still glad that they all pulled away from the group hug. There was only so long three grown men were allowed to cuddle on a bed before it got a bit weird.

“Is El coming?” Zayn asked, skillfully changing the topic. He adopted his favourite weird accent to add, “Or is it just the boys tonight, eh?”

“The boys,” Niall said. He stood up. “And _my_ boy is going to be miffed if we’re up here much longer.”

It was all set up to be a perfect sort of night, the kind that made Liam forget about the camera in his rucksack and the studio waiting for him in the basement and just... have a good time. Which meant, of course, that something had to go wrong; a bomb threat, an actual -- highly uncomfortable -- orgy, Harry burning the roast...

Louis. Standing against the kitchen counter, chatting to Harry, like he belonged there.

“You made it,” Niall said, not sounding surprised. “Get fired again?”

“They just don’t _get_ me,” Louis said. He was grinning and relaxed, hair gelled into stylish disarray, and Liam felt his breath catch. Was looking like that even legal?

He stood there like a moron while everyone else exchanged greetings. Zayn seemed to hesitate before clapping Louis on the shoulder, but Louis’ smile was warm enough to melt Rocky Road and Liam neither understood nor cared about Zayn’s antics.

“Can everyone get out of my kitchen, please?” Harry asked, shooing Niall away from the carrots he was attempting to peel. “I’ve got a lot of knives at my disposal, and while I’m not exactly sure how to use them in the context of maiming, I’m a quick study when I need to be.”

Louis and Niall hurried into the living room and Zayn followed after a quick tug at one of Harry’s curls, but Liam stayed.

“He looks really good,” Liam said quietly. “Like, _really_ good.”

Harry snickered, picking his knife up again. “He always looks good. Get used to it.”

“Am I allowed to do photos tonight? This is basically the most attractive group of lads I’ve ever seen gathered in one place, and I should probably capitalise.”

“No you’re not,” Harry said. “And you mean ‘part of’.”

“Sorry?”

Fixing Liam with a look that usually preceded something getting thrown at his face, Harry clarified, “The most attractive group of lads you’ve ever been _a part of_. Jokes aside, Liam, you’re pretty hot.”

“Okay,” Liam said, because what else could he say? ‘Thank you’? Wait, yes, that would be the polite thing, wouldn’t it. “Thanks, man.”

“No problem. Now leave.”

Harry turned his back, making it abundantly clear that the conversation was over. For now. Liam took a moment to collect his jaw from the floor and his thoughts, which had scattered and hid, before following Harry’s order.

So Harry’s advice on how to deal with Louis was ‘get used to it’. That seemed impossible, and Liam wasn’t sure he wanted to, besides.

 

****

 

“I don’t wrap things,” Liam warned the boys, feeling around in his rucksack for his sore excuses of presents.

“All for the best,” Zayn said. “I remember Nialler’s birthday --”

“We don’t talk about that,” Harry snickered.

Louis’ expression of frustration at being out of the loop had made plenty of appearances at dinner and was back in full force, so Liam took pity on him and explained, “It took Niall twenty minutes to open my present, and it wasn’t even worth the effort.”

“It was socks,” Niall said, glaring like he wasn’t quite over it yet. “You didn’t get me socks again, did you? I will hurt you.”

“Not socks.” Liam got a hold of Niall’s present, which was not in any way an article of clothing, and threw it at him. Harry had really good reflexes, so he managed to prevent it from beaning Niall in the forehead. What a shame.

“Er, thanks,” Harry said. “I’m sure you needed a flash drive, didn’t you, babe?”

“I... like the shamrock strap.”

“Very Irish,” Louis agreed.

Were his friends always such dumbasses, or was the eggnog seriously getting to them? Either way, the answer was depressing. Sometimes he wondered why acquaintances of Harry and Niall considered Liam the ‘smart one’, but then something like this came up and he remembered that the competition wasn’t very strong.

“Hey, morons, the present is what’s on the flash drive,” Zayn said, exasperated. He was the _actual_ most intelligent of the group, which made Liam wonder if he himself was more or less of a dumbass than Harry.

“Oh,” said Niall happily. “What’s on it, then?”

“Is it porn?” Harry looked at the USB hopefully.

Liam sighed. “Not porn. Not porn and not socks.”

“Pity.”

“It’s pictures,” Liam said. “To be specific, it’s the entirety of my ‘Niall and Harry being disgustingly in love’ folder. Which, to be fair, includes some photos one might classify as porn.” Everyone stared; Liam felt supremely uncomfortable. “I... don’t have a lot of money this year. Sorry, you can’t even -- you can’t even return it, I didn’t _think_ \--” He was cut off by an armful of Niall. “Wh- what is this? What’s happening?”

“This is a hug, Liam,” Niall said.

“You don’t hug.”

“He hugs plenty,” Harry piped up loyally.

“You don’t hug _me_ , and now it’s twice in one night,” corrected Liam. “You -- you like it, really?”

In his most polite voice, Niall said, “It’s a very nice hug.”

“No, not the -- the present, you dumbass. You like it?”

Niall finally climbed off him and returned to his seat on the sofa. Harry immediately took the opportunity to come into Liam’s personal space and kiss his nose.

“We like it,” he confirmed.

“What’s my prezzie?” Zayn asked, loud enough to remind Harry he was still uncomfortably close to Liam. Sometimes Harry forgot he was in a relationship -- but more than that, he tended to be oblivious to things like jealousy and possessiveness. When he sat back beside Niall, Liam knew the arm slung around Harry’s shoulders wasn’t a _warning_ or anything, just Niall re-claiming what was his.

Of course, if Harry ever knew that he was considered ‘Niall’s’ they’d all get a lecture on _people aren’t property_ and whatever else. Harry’s lectures were legendary.

“A flash drive with my ‘Zayn can sleep anywhere’ collection,” Liam deadpanned.

“Damn, that’s what I got him,” Louis said.

He was trying so hard -- even though he knew everyone individually, Louis hadn’t been around all four of them at once, and Liam was incredibly sympathetic to him. If he _knew_ how to help Louis feel included, he would do so.

Social situations were so not Liam’s thing, though, so he just carefully took the plastic-wrapped Marvel comics out of his rucksack.

Zayn made a noise that he would later deny as a screech. “Liam!”

“Zayn,” Liam said, handing the issues over. “Last time I checked, you didn’t have these ones?”

“I still don’t,” Zayn reassured him. He swapped the comics for a slim box wrapped in snowman paper in one swift move. “I -- thank you, thank you! I thought you said you didn’t have money?” The other boys looked at Liam collectively, like, _yeah, you did say that_.

“Well, I didn’t after I bought those. Comics are a lot more expensive than I expected -- I was hoping for, like, fifty-pence issues.”

“Thank you,” Zayn repeated. His smile looked ridiculous, like his face was going to break in half. Or maybe Liam was just too accustomed to Zayn’s Modelling Face. Zayn stepped forward, hooked his arm around Liam’s neck in the loosest stranglehold ever, and kissed the underside of Liam’s jaw. That was what Liam was hoping for -- not the kiss, or the touching, because Zayn touched him more than Harry did and if Liam was interested in Zayn he’d be in for a world of heartbreak -- but he’d been hoping for Zayn to be pleased with his present.

“Why did you spend all your money on him?” Harry whined.

“I like him the best,” said Liam.

It was a blatant lie, but Niall still picked up a stray jellybean from beside his foot and threw it in Liam’s general direction. Louis giggled, like, honest-to-god _giggled_ , cross-legged on the floor. Liam sort of wanted to sit down, too, but Zayn was plastered to his side and he was so warm that Liam didn’t want him to move just yet.

“Open yours,” Niall suggested when the quiet lasted a beat too long.

“Feels like a DVD,” Liam said. He shook the package, positive his guess was correct. “Is it Toy Story 3?”

“Nope.”

“Do I even like any other movies?” Liam joked at his own expense, tearing the paper open. “Oh, man, Captain America? _Awesome_!”

“Great minds think alike,” Zayn said.

“Hawkeye is the best,” Niall immediately said, bringing up an argument that had been going on since Avengers Assemble had come into the local theatre.

“The Hulk,” said Zayn.

“I prefer Iron Man,” Louis said, and Harry shot him a finger-gun of agreement.

“Your poor taste in superheros reminds me,” said Liam, “I got you something.”

He reached into his bag, ignoring Harry’s catcall and Louis’ _oh you didn’t have to do that Liam_ , and threw the ridiculously inexpensive gift into Louis’ lap.

“I saw it and I thought of you and I mentioned not having a lot of money to spend because of Zayn’s primadonna-ness, right?” Liam said in a rush. He was hoping to distract Louis from the fact that he’d just tossed a Buzz Lightyear PEZ dispenser at him. “I’m really sorry.”

Louis gaped at Liam. For a moment that felt much longer than it probably was, he looked a little speechless. Then he said, “I didn’t get you anything”, turning the PEZ dispenser over in his hands.

“You didn’t have to get me anything,” Liam said, laughing. “We just met, for god’s sake. I’m just a moron.”

The arm around Liam’s neck tightened, and Liam remembered that, oh yeah, Zayn knew him pretty damned well, too. Arguably -- argued by Zayn, specifically -- he knew Liam _better_ than Harry or Niall could claim to. There was no way he hadn’t picked up on Liam’s crush. That was far too much to hope. Thankfully, he stayed silent and let the conversation drift to what Louis _had_ brought in terms of gifts.

 

****

 

“So, Louis is great,” Liam said.

He wanted to get the yes-I-fancy-the-crap-out-of-this-guy bit of his and Zayn’s catch-up out of the way quickly. Zayn passed him another soapy dish and snorted.

“He isn’t, really,” Zayn said. Then, he paused and frowned at himself. “Well, no, he _is_ , he’s pretty great, but also... he isn’t?”

“That clears everything up, thank you.”

Zayn flicked water at him, and Liam smacked his hip with a towel. This, if nothing else, was familiar; Harry and Niall had a habit of making messes and then neglecting to do anything about it, so Zayn would. Sometimes Liam took pity on him and helped, but Zayn had cleaning up after them down to such an art by now that he knew more about the layout of Niall’s cupboards than Niall himself did.

“You’re putting him on a pedestal, aren’t you?” Zayn asked after a couple of plates. “Like you did with Danielle. Like you _still_ do with Danielle.”

“Danielle’s kind of perfect, though,” Liam said. The break-up had been entirely his fault, after all.

“No,” said Zayn, “she isn’t, and neither is Lou. Nobody is.”

“That’s great, Hannah Montana, but why are you bursting my Louis Bubble?” Liam asked, putting down the mug he hadn’t completely dried to turn his full attention onto Zayn.

Zayn turned off the tap, and the kitchen was suddenly silent. Liam could hear a Christmas movie blaring from the next room over, and the low murmur of Niall singing along. He felt -- at home. Not even the look Zayn was giving him, pitying and a little angry, could make that feeling go away.

“What?” he asked, defensive.

“He’s being good tonight so Harry doesn’t do the big puppy eyes,” Zayn said, “but Lou was pissed at me when I left.”

“Because you left?”

“No, the timing just coincided.” Zayn stepped closer so the chances of anyone else hearing him were less likely. “Lou gets mad ridiculously easily. He gets mad, and he stays mad, and he holds grudges, and he never apologises. That’s what’s wrong with him. Not the only thing, but the one that’ll get _you_ into the most trouble.”

Liam tried to picture Louis angry and couldn’t. “Why’d you say it like that? What do you mean, get _me_ into the most trouble?”

“You’re not the easiest person to get along with, Liam, you know that,” Zayn said, rubbing Liam’s shoulder to soothe the sting from his words. “And Louis doesn’t like _trying_ to get along. I mean, why do you think Harry waited so long to get you two in the same room?”

“Why is it down to Harry?” Liam asked pointedly.

“Alright, you caught me. I didn’t want you two to meet, either.”

Why exactly were his friends conspiring to keep such a beautiful specimen away from him, though? Was Louis actually a robot they’d invented while drunk and now they were trying to throw Liam off the scent? Or were they, like, ashamed of Liam? Oh, that’s just our friend Liam. He’s not very good with people or anything that doesn’t involve his camera. It’s best to leave him to his own devices. No, he doesn’t get lonely.

He almost shrugged Zayn’s hand off his shoulder, but it had been weeks since he’d seen the guy, and it was like his irritation was being slowly siphoned away by Zayn’s palm.

Zayn leaned in even closer and stage-whispered, “I kind of wanted to keep you to myself.”

Liam laughed. “Is this, like, your weird way of flirting, or? Do you want a raise? What’s happening here?”

“I’m not flirting with you,” Zayn chuckled. “At least, not intentionally. Maybe Hazza’s rubbing off on me. And I wouldn’t object to a raise, but I have a feeling that you’d be giving me your grocery money.”

“Your feeling is spot-on.”

“I just want you to be careful,” Zayn said, serious again. “You’re going to get hurt if you keep up with the ‘Louis can do no wrong’ mindset, because he _really_ can.”

Not entirely sure what to say to that, Liam shrugged. He didn’t really want to get hurt, no, but sometimes it was inevitable. Louis was exactly the sort of bloke Liam’s mum might call a heartbreaker, to which Liam would counter that she’d never met Harry. Zayn took the hint, in any case, and removed his hand from Liam’s shoulder, returning to the sink.

Liam joined him silently and picked up the drying towel. Zayn had always been good at quiet, which was sometimes exactly what Liam needed, but it didn’t feel as comfortable as it used to -- Liam had a feeling that Zayn was still worrying about his crush on Louis.

“How was Spain?” he asked, partially as a distraction, but mostly because he really wanted to know. “Details.”

“Spain was -- good, I suppose. Nothing to write home about, which is why I didn’t. I went tanning and avoided the water, ate too much room service, hooked up with a nice girl from South Shields, wished it would snow --”

“Whoa, dial back,” Liam said. “Tell me about this girl, huh? What’s she like?”

Generally, Liam wasn’t good at reading emotions, but he’d had a lot of practice studying Zayn’s face, so he caught the grin before Zayn attempted to cover it up with an impassive mask. Liam smiled down at the dish he was half-heartedly drying. When his friends were happy, he felt a sort of second-hand contentment that was akin to the memory of mum’s Sunday dinners. It took Zayn a moment to collect his thoughts, or put them in the right order, or decide what to tell Liam, but eventually he spilled the beans.

“She’s awesome,” he said. “A total dork, which as you can imagine is the sort of thing I look for in a woman; can’t hold her liquor and can roll a blunt with her toes. She’s got a fantastic voice, too, though that’s sort of to be expected, innit.”

“How do you mean?”

Zayn shifted uncomfortably. “Well, er, she’s kind of... famous.”

“I beg your pardon?” Liam asked, laughing. “Do I know of her? Is she a porn star, Zayn? You’d tell me if she was a porn star, right?”

“I would definitely tell you, but she isn’t,” Zayn said. “Her name is, uh, Perrie. Edwards.”

Liam nearly dropped a plate.

“From Little Mix, you mean? As in, the girls who won last year on the X-Factor?”

“The -- yeah, the very same.” Holy crap. Zayn’s life was awesome. “It wasn’t, whatever, serious, but she said she’ll call when she gets back to London, which I’m not -- I don’t _care_ , okay, she’s great and all and it was really cool having a famous lady take an interest in _me_ but I’m not turning into you, Liam, I don’t pine.”

“Thank you.”

“Shut up,” Zayn laughed. “Did you want an autograph or something?”

“I’d like to meet her, actually,” said Liam, kicking the side of Zayn’s foot. “Not as _Perrie Edwards_ , but as the girl who’s turned you into me.”

In retaliation, Zayn flicked water in Liam’s face. “Maybe, man, maybe. We’ll see.”

Then he just kept _looking_ at Liam, and it was really disconcerting. Nobody but his sisters had ever given him that sort of look. He didn’t have a name for it, but it usually meant an awkward talk was coming and he should probably get out while he still could.

He sighed and said, “Louis.”

“Louis,” Zayn agreed. “You know, it sounds more like you fancy the idea of him. You don’t even really know him.”

“So? It’s not like that hurts anybody,” Liam pointed out.

Actually, he thought it was almost better. Louis hadn’t felt _real_ from the moment Liam saw him, and it was easier to act like he wasn’t. Like he was some kind of robot, or alien, or demigod, and didn’t have faults, because all knowing the faults of people he cared about did was make Liam sad and too-careful. Like how he was once told that Harry was a sore loser, and ever since had let Harry win everything.

Perfection was such a distant concept for everyone else, but Liam thought it should _actually_ be something to strive for -- not something _impossible_.

Zayn was still giving him the Ruth-and-Nicola-tag-team look, though.

“It hurts you,” he said.

“You’re -- incredibly nice to me, you know that?” Liam fought down the blush he knew Zayn would laugh at. He wasn’t used to this, to having friends that cared about him to this extent. “You’re, like, really great. What did Louis even get mad at you for? How could he have?”

After muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, _don’t put me up there, too_ , Zayn said, “I’m not really that great, and neither is Lou. Sometimes our not-great qualities rub each other the wrong way, you know?”

“Not... really.”

“Well, it’s kind of like -- Harry. He’s great. _You’re_ great. Yet the two of you can argue for weeks about nothing.”

It was so not _nothing_ , but Liam wasn’t going to get into that. Now he could sort of see where Zayn was coming from. Sometimes friends just... clashed. It didn’t mean that Zayn and Louis weren’t _great_ people, because they were, and Liam would fight anyone who said differently.

“He hasn’t even told me what he got Niall,” Liam complained.

“His dick in a box?”

“I made that joke already, get your own.”

Zayn stuck his tongue out, and Liam dipped his hand in the lukewarm water to smear it across Zayn’s face. Zayn yelped loudly, and they heard Niall yell over their laughter, “Don’t break my kitchen!”

 

****

 

The day before Christmas Eve, Harry called Liam to ask if he’d take more pictures of Louis. Liam was suspicious of his intentions, to say the least, but agreed willingly enough. Lord knew he’d wanted to get his camera back onto Louis for -- had it been less than two weeks, really? That seemed impossible.

In any case, Louis showed up with his hair styled like it had been at Harry’s dinner, the smile he’d also worn there conspicuously absent.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Louis said immediately. “Where do you want me?”

“Studio,” said Liam.

Louis looked genuinely relieved that Liam wasn’t going to ask what was making him look so upset, but hell, sometimes people just didn’t want to talk about it and Liam _got_ that. Unlike Harry, which he supposed explained Louis preemptively ending the discussion.

When Liam was angry or sad or whatever emotion was currently plaguing Louis, he hated everyone and everything, especially cheerful people. Keeping that in mind, he retrieved his camera and got everything set up without more words than were needed to give Louis simple directions on where to stand. He hoped he was helping a little. For the first few shots Louis glared down the lens of the camera but Liam must’ve done something right because after awhile he started to relax and when Liam said “smile” in his most mild voice, Louis actually did.

Just because he didn’t say anything, though, didn’t mean he wasn’t wondering. Why was Louis upset? _There’s that temper I was warned about_ , he thought. Then he stopped, disgusted at himself. His first idea ought to have been something like ‘maybe he had a bad morning’, not... that.

Where was the time machine he needed to go back and punch Zayn in the face? Now he was _looking_ for flaws, wasn’t he, and that wasn’t fair.

“I think we’re good for today,” Liam said, lowering his camera and smiling apologetically at Louis.

“Cool,” Louis said. Then, for reasons Liam’s brain couldn’t quite compute, he held out his hands. After a long moment of confused silence, Louis rolled his eyes and clarified, “Your turn.”

“I -- no.” Liam’s life was rapidly spinning out of control. “You did me once already, I’m terrible, that’s the end of it. Please.”

Louis’ smile was looking more and more like he was gritting his teeth together. “Sorry, that’s my condition. You take pictures of me, I don’t get paid, so I get to take pictures of you. It’s one hundred percent fair and if you don’t give me the camera I will take it by force, okay?”

“I thought the condition was,” Liam said, looking around for an exit sign, “I let you stay here and eat my food when Hazza refuses to put on clothes for longer than is comfortable.”

“I changed my mind, I love it when Harry’s naked. Give me the camera.”

Liam thought back to the first time Louis had done this -- he’d found him so _aggravating_. What had changed? Like, Louis was still totally annoying and possibly had never stopped being so; Liam wracked his memories and couldn’t find the tipping point into ‘he’s the most perfect guy in the world’, which was a little bit worrying. He knew he’d lose this fight, though, so he went to shove his camera at Louis, stopped because he didn’t want to hurt his baby, and let Louis take it carefully from his hands.

Wasting no time, Louis started taking pictures right away, pulling the camera away from his face every couple of shots to check -- something, Liam didn’t know. The focus? The lighting? He couldn’t tell, and that more than anything was getting under his skin. He crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling, refusing to pose. Louis didn’t seem to care.

“Are you mad at me, Li?” he asked in a lilting tone.

“No,” Liam said.

It would’ve been much more convincing if he hadn’t spit the word through his teeth, but Louis just laughed and said, “Good”, so it didn’t look like Liam’s actual opinion mattered much.

Thankfully, Louis kept the torture short. It was only five minutes later or so when he said, “All right, that’s a wrap,” and turned off the strobe lights that Liam was thinking about smashing. He handed Liam’s camera over with a smile that didn’t seem forced at all; it was like bugging Liam had chased his bad mood away. Liam wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Do you have anything warm to drink?” Louis asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “It’s really cold in here.”

“Yeah,” Liam said. “Yeah to both. Come on, I’ll find something.” He put the camera on an end table in the hallway and tried to visualise his cupboards. He didn’t have any coffee, thanks to Harry, and he couldn’t remember if there were any tea-bags left.

Louis dropped into a chair -- the same chair he’d used when he first came over, not that Liam was paying attention at that level of creepiness -- and shrugged his jacket off like an afterthought. He was wearing a striped shirt under it that Liam was about ninety percent sure he’d seen on Zayn at some point. On Zayn, though, the sleeves didn’t fit so tightly around his upper arms; Louis had very nice arms, Liam hadn’t really noticed.

Now he had to stop noticing. It was a wonder Louis didn’t already think he was a bit dim.

“Hot chocolate?” he asked, looking sadly at his tea-free cupboard.

“It’s safer than coffee,” said Louis. Before Liam could comment on the call-back to what he’d been trying not to think of as their ‘first date’, he added, “Yeah, hot chocolate is good. You should put a pinch of salt in with it as well.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“No, I swear it’s good! Gemma’s tip.” Louis held a hand over his heart.

Liam made a face and turned to put the kettle on. His expression reflected, distorted, in the metal -- he looked like a funhouse mirror. “Gemma is wrong about a lot of things, Louis. I think she just throws things together in an effort to be a better cook than Harry. Besides, _salt_?”

“So you know Gemma,” Louis said.

“Of course. Pretty, good sense of fashion, terribly charming.” Liam didn’t want to look over at Louis and see the _why haven’t you and I met, then?_ all over his face, so he busied himself with finding mugs.

“Well,” Louis said after a pause. “She _is_ related to Harry.”

“So the theory is that it’s genetic.”

“That’s what I’m going with, yeah. If it was able to be learned, the whole world would be full of Harrys, wouldn’t it?”

Shaking away that frankly terrifying mental image, Liam busied himself with making the hot chocolate. Whatever had put Louis in a bad mood when he’d shown up at the door was totally gone; he launched into a story about one of his old bosses who’d fired him for something Harry had done, because she just _couldn’t believe_ such a sweet boy had broken in after hours and eaten half a bag of chicken nuggets.

It was a pretty funny story, Liam had to admit. He was well-acquainted with Harry’s charms and he almost felt sorry for the anonymous woman, except that he couldn’t stop himself from thinking too hard about a question that had been nagging at him for days.

“Why do you get fired so much?” Liam wondered, handing Louis a mug. Louis perked up, either because of the drink or because he got the chance to talk about himself.

See, that was what Liam hated about knowing the bad parts of people: the way he thought about them afterward, mean-spirited and not at all fair.

Louis took a long sip, giving Liam time to sit across the table from him. “I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been called ‘difficult’ in the past, though at the time Harold was trying to get me to go to Grimmy’s and the food there is _really gross_ , so I would say that’s a radical interpretation of the text.”

That wasn’t exactly an answer, but Liam let the subject go.

“Grimmy is an alright bloke,” he said.

Snorting into his mug, Louis said, “Yeah, I guess. Can’t cook worth shit, though, and his obsession with Haz is just embarrassing. Man is, what, twice his age?”

“He’s... nine or ten years older than us,” said Liam. Louis’ comments rubbed him the wrong way, for some reason. It must’ve been because of Zayn -- after all, Liam had thought such things about Grimmy before, there was no reason to think any less of Louis for voicing the thoughts. No reason at all.

Except... what was he saying about Liam, then? When he was at home with Harry? Was he laughing at Liam’s awkwardness the way he laughed at Grimmy’s crush on Harry, or what?

Okay, he needed to stop ferreting around for faults, like, immediately, so he glanced around for some kind of distraction. His eyes landed on the digital clock in his microwave.

“It’s getting late,” Liam said, ignoring Louis’ raised eyebrows. “If you don’t mind too much, I’m going to turn in.”

It was a good enough excuse as any. He was getting kind of tired, yeah, but mostly he was just ready to stop dealing with all the confusing thoughts he was having in regards to Louis.

“Do what you like,” said Louis. “But I’m not sleeping on the floor again, so, like, where do you want me?” Wasn’t _that_ a loaded question to Liam’s Harry-infected ears.

“Well, you’re the guest --”

“Thanks, mate,” Louis interrupted him with a pointy grin. “I won’t go snooping through your bedside drawers. Probably.”

Well, Liam had actually meant that since Louis was the guest he ought to sleep on the sofa, but now that he’d accidentally offered his bed he couldn’t very well take it back, could he? They finished their hot chocolates in relative silence and there was an awkward moment where Liam took a blanket and pillow from his bed and handed Louis a pair of pajama bottoms that he refused -- “I usually don’t, I mean, if it doesn’t bother you? You can just, whatever, wash the sheets or something if it does, yeah?” -- and Liam used literally all his self control not to picture Louis naked.

Liam hated sleeping on his own sofa. Disgruntled, he fished his phone out of his pocket to text Zayn _why didn’t anyone warn me he’s so annoying?_

 _Well, I did_ , Zayn replied in record time, and then added, _but you should’ve known, shouldn’t you, I mean no one is perfect_.

He imagined Zayn was practicing his I-told-you-so in the mirror, which only served to agitate Liam more. He could’ve gone his whole life thinking Louis was some kind of Roman sun god or something, but Zayn just had to come in and ruin the image, didn’t he?

Even knowing Zayn was right, Liam still stubbornly typed back, _but he was SO CLOSE_.

 _No, he wasn’t_. Liam switched his phone off, not wanting to see any more of Zayn’s irritatingly accurate statements. He tossed and turned for what felt like hours but most likely wasn’t, more disappointed about the illusion shattering than anything else. How hard would it have been to let him believe it, really? Would that have been so terrible?

It seemed to Liam that he got no sleep whatsoever, and his sofa was incredibly uncomfortable besides, so it wasn’t all that surprising when he woke up in a foul mood. He just wanted to duck under his blanket and fall back asleep, but the sun was too bright and someone was making a whole lot of noise in his kitchen.

He swung himself into a standing position, swaying for a moment while the spots blinked out of his eyes, and ambled into the kitchen. Louis was, of course, already awake and looking very well-rested. Tosser.

“Morning,” he chirped to Liam. “I can’t much cook, but toast is in my repertoire, would you like some?”

Liam just grunted, clomping over to the coffee container on his counter only to, oh yeah, find it empty. He vaguely remembered knowing he was out of caffeine, but the reminder just grated on him the wrong way. Here’s your punishment, it seemed to say, for trying to make a god out of a man. Enjoy it.

“How’d you sleep?” Louis asked, still smiling.

“Fantastic.”

Long pause. “That... was sarcasm. I didn’t think you were a sarcasm kind of bloke, Li _am_.” Louis laughed, loudly, and it was just -- wow, it was _so_ annoying, and Liam didn’t know if it was because of Zayn’s advice or the lack of sleep or what, but he felt the hairs on his forearms raise like hackles.

“Oh, piss off,” he said.

He fixed Louis with a glare, and Louis’ smile fell so quickly that Liam nearly felt bad. Except that he didn’t, because there was no coffee and Louis was making himself at home and that was _really aggravating_ in the morning.

“Looks like someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Couch, you mean,” Liam said, dropping into a chair. “And every side of it is the wrong side, thanks.”

“No need to be like that,” Louis said. His voice was chilly now, with an edge that said, like, _don’t push it_. Except that Liam wanted to push it, he did. He wanted to be the kid in the elevator who pressed all of the buttons on his way out. The metaphorical elevator buttons being Louis’ nerves, that is. “I was just offering some toast, yeah. Do you want it or not?”

“No. Thanks.”

Louis turned his back to Liam purposefully, fiddling around with Liam’s toaster. He wasn’t trying to be quiet in the slightest, and Liam was getting downright angry about it all.

He was mad at Louis for being the way he was, he was mad at Zayn for pointing it all out, and he was mad at Harry for ever bringing Louis into his life. Mostly he was mad at himself, though; the slightest hint of The Real, Flawed Louis and he couldn’t deal with it. He didn’t want to see the shattered illusion at all.

How bad a person did that make him?

Probably very much a bad person. What would a bad person do when they felt like this? Upset and angry and ready to blow at the slightest provocation? The answer was simple: take it out on someone else.

So Liam built it up, all his irritation at everyone involved with this stupid situation, and said, “You aren’t a very nice person, are you?”

Something clanged, and Louis visibly tensed.

“ _I’m_ not a very nice person, he says.” He rounded on Liam, his eyes narrowed into slits. Liam felt a bit of a guilty pang, but he let it fade with the pulse of actual anger -- this was the reaction he’d been expecting, after all. “Me, I’m not. Me who’s offering to make breakfast for him. Really. On my --”

“Not breakfast,” Liam interrupted. “Toast.”

“You’re being a dick,” said Louis.

He was, wasn’t he? He was being a total dick, and yet he couldn’t actually bring himself to care. Not enough to stop, anyway. No, Louis didn’t deserve this, but Liam was so tired of this emotional rollercoaster.

“I am,” Liam agreed. “I think you need someone to be a dick to you, sometimes.”

“You know, somehow, I don’t have that as a requirement on my CV,” Louis said, crossing his arms across his chest. “Especially today. So feel free to stop at any time.”

“No.”

That simple word, just two letters, was all it took. Liam watched as Louis’ face shuttered; his figurative walls coming up, not brick-by-brick, but all at once. Liam had been warned plenty about Louis’ temper -- maybe now he would get to see it first-hand.

“No?” Louis repeated. His voice had changed, somehow, but he wasn’t yelling. All the horror stories, and he wasn’t even a shouter. “You’re not going to stop being a dick?”

“I wasn’t planning on it, no,” Liam said.

“Wonderful, good, yes, this is _exactly_ what I fucking need.”

Maybe Liam wanted to make it hurt, just a bit, because he never would have said, “Right, because it’s all about what you need, isn’t it?”, in his regular state of mind. That was a thing a parent said to a spoiled child; a lover with something to hide hurled to cover up their own deceit. It was not in any way a mature argument, and it was kind of a low blow, besides.

That’s what he was going for, though, wasn’t it? Low blows, hurt feelings. Anything to get Louis out of his apartment and out of his mind.

He might’ve been able to say something worse -- something he dredged up from a half-forgotten episode of a soap opera or from his sisters’ teenage squabbles -- except that seemed to have done the trick. Without another word, Louis walked out of the kitchen.

A few seconds later, Liam heard his front door slam.

He sat there until the bread popped out of the toaster, just staring at the cupboards like they’d feed him some ridiculous line.

‘Go after him’, the movies all said. Well, what if Liam didn’t _want_ to? He was tired of his life, recently, revolving around what Louis would think and what Louis was good at and what sorts of crinkles appeared around Louis’ eyes when he smiled. He was done with it all, at least for now, and the very last thing he wanted to do was follow Louis home and make some kind of half-hearted apology.

Liam’s blood was boiling -- not literally, he hoped, because what an end to a bad morning _that_ would be -- and all he could think about was the pitying expression on Zayn’s face when he found out how Liam felt about Louis.

He couldn’t stay at home anymore. Everything in his flat was tainted by Louis, which was pretty disconcerting as he’d only been there a handful of times. How had he seeped into the walls themselves? Was Liam’s whole flat a sponge for painful feelings or was Louis just particularly good at leaving a mark?

Not bothering to grab his jacket, Liam headed out of the flat in a jumper and sweats, making sure to snag his camera bag as he went.

 

****

 

“You really ought to lock your door,” Liam called through Niall’s quiet house, kicking snow and mud off his boots. He leaned down to begin the arduous process of unlacing them. “I could be anyone, you know, come to rob you of all the strobe lights and reflectors you have...”

“I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”

Liam nearly fell over. The amused voice was Harry’s, not Niall’s. While that shouldn’t have surprised him so much, he still tripped over his bootlaces and caught himself on the nearest windowsill.

“Haz,” he said, “hi, what’re you --”

“Doing here?” Harry was only half dressed, as he often was, and leaning against the kitchen door frame with an easy grin like Liam hadn’t almost broken his neck because of him. Or possibly that was the cause of the amusement -- Liam couldn’t be certain, but he had a shrewd suspicion it was the latter. Harry’s dimples deepened as they always did when he was trying to hold in laughter. “I live here.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Nah, I don’t, but I might as well.”

With minimal injury, Liam pulled his boots off. He debated throwing one at Harry, but Harry knew him too well. He had his groin covered with both hands before Liam could even think too hard about it. Grumbling about shaving off eyebrows, Liam dropped the footwear.

“Happy almost Christmas,” Liam added onto his muttered threats, to be polite.

“You too,” Harry said. He didn’t move his hands from their protective positioning, which was probably a smart idea. “So, what are _you_ doing here?”

“I need to wind down. A lot.” Liam felt all that irritation bubbling to the surface again, but pushed it down. The last thing he needed was to argue with Harry, too. Well, actually, the _last_ thing he needed was syphilis, but. “I was going to, like, take some pictures of Niall, but if he’s not here I can --”

“Nialler’s in Mullingar for the hols, remember?”

“Oh. Right.”

“You can shoot me,” Harry offered, sounding strangely excited about the prospect.

Not wanting to be rude, Liam paused like he was thinking it over. He really, _really_ hated using Harry as a model, since he was such shit at staying still. On the other hand, though, he missed his studio -- the only place in his life Louis hadn’t poisoned with his presence. Plus, in Harry’s favour, Liam’s followers adored him.

“You’re...” _So bad, though._ “Not wearing a shirt.”

“Yeah,” Harry said, looking down. “You’re gonna get, like, ten thousand notes on Tumblr.”

“Someone’s vain,” Liam muttered. It was, roughly, one hundred percent true, but Harry didn’t need to hear that. His ego might explode. Liam weighed the pros and cons, but his skin was still pricking from the anger and he needed the calming effect that looking through a ridiculously expensive lens afforded him. His better judgement screeching in protest, Liam said, “Oh, alright, then.”

Harry didn’t wait for instruction (“where do you want me?” Louis would’ve asked, but Liam wasn’t thinking about him), just set off down the hall to the basement door.

Already in the process of piecing his camera together from all the breakable bits in his rucksack, Liam followed. Attaching a lens and a plate while walking was a learned talent, something that Liam had worked hard to do properly. He bet that Louis would be able to do it naturally.

_Stop thinking about Louis. That’s the whole point of being here._

“Why are you hanging out at Niall’s while he’s out of the country, anyhow?” Liam asked. He managed the stairs-and-battery-insert combination with difficulty, but looked up in time to see Harry shrug. As Liam stood at the bottom of the stairs, breathing in the clean, Louis-free air, Harry collapsed into the armchair that was still against the wall from Zayn’s last shoot. Over a month ago. “Jesus, Niall never puts shit away, does he?”

“He does not,” Harry said. Christ, he was _already_ fidgeting, and the camera wasn’t even on yet. “And I’m here because -- don’t laugh -- I’m here because I missed his smell.”

Liam couldn’t side-eye Harry very well when he was untangling extension cords, but he made a go of it. While he positioned and plugged in a light that had a large softbox already attached -- another mark of Niall’s laziness -- he shot a properly incredulous look Harry’s way.

“But he smells like... sweat. And dude.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, avoiding Liam’s eye, “to you, maybe. To me he smells like sex and -- and home, all right?”

It would be so easy to take the mick out of Harry for being such a sap, and Lord knew that if Liam had said something like that Harry would’ve jumped right on it, but Liam didn’t work like that.

Some of his anger and annoyance drifted away when he thought about it, about the fact that two of his best friends loved each other so _much_ that the mere smell of the other was like home. He’d never felt anything like that, himself, but he thought it must mean something big.

He smiled warmly, which made Harry flush almost as bad as he’d have done if Liam teased him. Taking pity on his emotionally stunted friend, Liam grabbed his favourite tripod from the corner and set it up. Harry didn’t bother arranging his body into any semblance of a pose -- this, just him lounging in a chair that looked far too fancy for the pajama pants slung around his hips, was enough for Liam’s followers.

“Should I look seducing?” Harry asked, realising after the first few snaps of Liam’s camera that he wasn’t actually doing anything. “As a Christmas present to all those blogging teenage girls and boys who lust after my body?”

“You look seductive enough as you are,” said Liam. “Please don’t try for more, I’ll have to leave the room.”

Harry laughed. “If only they knew that your torso’s way nicer than mine.”

“I’m blushing, Haz.”

“Oh, sod off, you know what I mean.” Harry stayed quiet (but not _still_ ) for a while, letting Liam play around with the exposure settings and whatnot. After Liam decided he needed to plug in a fill light and stepped away from his camera to do so, Harry spoke again. “Hey, I was wondering, where’s Lou?”

Well, that topic hadn’t evaded him for long. Liam looked at Harry, who was sitting cross-legged now, a big smile on his face at the thought of his flatmate.

When Liam didn’t immediately answer, Harry added, “I hope he’s having a good day -- is he having a good day?”

“Uh,” said Liam. He turned away. “No, actually. I don’t think he is.”

Harry waited a whole three seconds, which was an outstanding show of patience from him. Liam fiddled with the extension cord of the second light, not wanting to see the look on Harry’s face. If he kept his back to him, Harry could still be smiling.

“Why not?”

“We, uh, had a fight.”

“You had a fight,” Harry repeated in a flat voice. “What about?”

That stumped Liam. He had no idea how he was supposed to word his irritation; ‘he’s not perfect’ and ‘it’s all Zayn’s fault’, while true, wouldn’t be accepted as good enough answers, and if he claimed not to know, Harry would just ask Louis.

He held up a finger to indicate that Harry had to give him a second, and thought it over as he switched the fill light on. By the time he turned back to his camera and Harry’s expectant face, he’d only thought of one thing to say.

“It’s going to sound petty if I say it out loud,” he said.

“It probably is petty, then,” said Harry. His eyes narrowed like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be mad at Liam, yet, or if the blame lay elsewhere. “Just tell me what happened, Liam.”

“Okay, but,” Liam said, flicking through the pictures he’d taken already, “only if you stop fidgeting for, like, two seconds. I’ve got the shutter speed on the fastest possible setting and you’re still blurred a bit around the hands. Keep still.”

“Fine. What happened with Lou?”

Liam told him, starting from his conversation with Zayn, and he was right -- it _did_ sound petty. Wasn’t it sort of pointless getting angry at a person not because of a specific flaw, but because they had flaws at all? Probably, but Liam wasn’t ready to stop being mad. He was mostly angry at himself, anyway. The longer he talked, the more Harry fidgeted, which wasn’t at all part of the deal. His leg was jumping and his hands were all over the place, tapping and shaking and digging into his thighs in a brief attempt at following Liam’s orders.

“Stay still, for fuck’s sake,” he said, an edge to his tone that was certainly caused by all this talk of Louis.

“I can’t,” said Harry. As if to prove his point, he stood up and started pacing in front of the armchair, winding and unwinding his hands. He looked more agitated than Liam himself felt. Suddenly, he stopped, looking at Liam head-on. Liam snapped a quick photo -- it was the most still he’d been so far. “Do you remember meeting Niall?”

“Of course I do, it was less than a year ago. You were on his lap, he was drunk.”

“And did you like him?”

“Well, yeah.” Liam had no idea where Harry was going with this, but he stepped away from the shutter button before he made Harry more upset by capturing his distressed expression. “It’s impossible not to like Niall.”

“Preaching to the choir, babe,” said Harry. “But you... you _aren’t_ impossible to dislike. Very easy to, actually, under the wrong circumstances.”

“I -- okay? That’s not very --”

“And so is Louis,” Harry said emphatically. “Liam, did you not wonder at all why you hadn’t met him before?”

That struck something in Liam, who had indeed been thinking this over for weeks. He’d come to the conclusion that he wasn’t as cool as Zayn or Caroline and therefore hadn’t been on priority to meet Harry’s awesome flatmate. When Harry kept looking at him, like he was waiting for an answer, Liam said, “Because I’m boring.”

“Because it wouldn’t have _worked_ before.”

Harry had officially lost him.

At Liam’s bewildered expression, Harry got even more anxious. He started pacing again and ran both hands through his curls, making them stick up in odd places.

“Look,” he said after a few seconds of quiet. “Liam. It wouldn’t have worked. I thought about it and thought about it and nothing would’ve worked, okay? If I brought Lou here, to the studio, when you were working, you’d have been a dick. Because that’s what you do when you’re in the ‘zone’ or whatever. And then Lou would get pissed off because that’s what _he_ does when people treat him badly. If I’d have brought you round to the flat you’d see Lou at his messiest, grumpiest point, because that’s what he does when he’s at home, that’s what everyone does when they’re at home, and a party just kind of spelled disaster for everyone -- are you following me at all?”

“No,” Liam said honestly.

“You’re fucking important to me, Liam,” Harry said, voice cracking a little on Liam’s name. “You’re important to me, and Louis is... Louis is really important to me, too, okay?”

Liam reached out, and when Harry didn’t move away, he gripped Harry’s shoulders and led him back to the armchair. Harry let himself be sat willingly enough, but tangled one of his hands with Liam’s when he tried to move away. He was almost panicky -- Liam hadn’t seen him in this sort of state since their sociology final.

“I know,” Liam said. “I know Louis is important to you, and I’m sorry I upset him, but --”

“No, it’s my fault.”

“What? It isn’t your --”

“Do you remember how you met Zayn?” Harry asked, interrupting Liam’s protest. He was really starting to worry Liam. If this was some kind of game -- a getting-to-know-you in reverse -- Liam was going to be furious.

“Library,” he answered. “I was working on my paper for English, you dropped in with a ridiculously attractive bloke I didn’t recognise, told us to talk about ‘childish things’ -- which, for the record, Pokemon and Power Rangers are _not_ \-- and left us to it.”

“I introduced you to your best friend that day.”

Coming from anyone else, something like that would sound self-impressed, but Harry made it sound like a statement of fact.

Which, Liam supposed, it was. He owed all his current friends and models to Harry. He started to understand what Harry was trying to say, about him being hard to get along with. Liam thought back to meeting Niall, to seeing Zayn’s face light up for the first time because Liam asked who his favourite Avenger was, and wondered if there was a way that he could’ve disliked either of them. He didn’t think there was, but Harry seemed to.

Harry seemed to think it was completely up to him, too; making sure his friends got along. Liam squeezed his hand.

“It was easy,” Harry continued, sounding a bit lost, “to get Louis friendly with Niall. I mean, they’re both so -- genuinely happy, most of the time, and they _knew_ how important the other was to me. You know, boyfriend, best friend, they had to -- and Zayn was a bit harder, I got lucky because Louis adored him from the off, but you --”

He hesitated for long enough that Liam had to prompt him with, “Me what?”

Harry looked up at him and he looked so upset that Liam didn't even feel irritated anymore -- he just wanted Harry to smile again.

“I thought I’d done it perfectly,” he said, ignoring Liam’s question. “I mean, you met in a comfortable sort of atmosphere, didn’t you? You didn’t know each other, but the situation was familiar, so it was supposed to, like, put you at ease. So that you would just -- _mesh_ like I needed you to, but I guess I was wrong, you’re too nitpicky and Lou’s too angry, I should’ve -- I should’ve known it wouldn’t work.”

“Why do you need us to get along so badly?” Liam asked, petting the side of Harry’s head.

“Because...” Harry struggled with an answer, but eventually said, “Everything would be screwed up if you didn’t. Like, our whole group dynamic. Even if one of you wasn’t there I’d still know that the reason you weren’t there was because the other _was_.”

“So you kept us apart for roughly a year... so you didn’t have to keep us apart?”

“That’s -- yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

After a moment’s pause, Liam burst out laughing. Harry stared at him but couldn’t help joining in, a blush staining his cheeks.

“You’re absolutely insane,” Liam got out through his giggles.

“Yeah, well.” Harry shrugged, then laughed again, resting his forehead on Liam’s stomach to hide his face. “I know. I just -- I just wanted to know what it would be like to have all of you, all four of you, in the same space. Without murdering each other. And... you know, it was pretty nice. That dinner we had? That’s what I wanted, Liam.”

He wasn’t laughing anymore, and Liam stopped once he realised that Harry was blatantly guilt-tripping him.

“Look, I’m not going to go apologise just because --”

“It’s his birthday.”

Liam stepped away, both his hands falling from Harry. “I -- what?”

The look Harry gave him was tinged with his sulking-child glare. Liam was surprised it was making its first appearance at this point in the conversation. “It’s his birthday today, Liam, and you fucked it up for him.”

He hadn’t known that. There was no way he could’ve known that. Except -- oh, possibly Louis had been trying to tell him, before all the insults and the annoyance and... yeah, alright, Liam was falling right into Harry’s trap. He felt guilty as hell. It took a special kind of douchebag to ruin Christmas Eve _and_ someone’s birthday.

“I’m still kinda mad, though,” Liam said.

“Go see him in the morning, then,” Harry suggested, looking much happier now that Liam had realised the extent of his stupidity. “When you’ve had a good sleep, and meal, and I’ll even stay still if you agree.”

Liam did agree, grudgingly, and Harry did not stay still.

 

****

 

“Hey, Louis,” Liam said, not entirely sure how to start an apology to someone who wasn’t Harry. “I, uh, am really sorry that I got mad.”

Louis’ eyes were narrowed in suspicion, but he said, “It’s cool. We all get mad.”

It was quiet for a moment; just Louis standing in his doorway like a barricade and Liam running through every half-arsed apology he’d ever made in his life, trying to figure out what made ‘I’m sorry’ sound sincere. Louis wasn’t helping at all, of course, because _he_ wasn’t the one who snapped at a (sort of, almost) friend for no good reason.

“I don’t think those things about you, by the way,” Liam blurted. “That was the sleep deprivation talking, not me.”

A reluctant little smile twisted Louis’ mouth. Liam’s chest swelled, just a little, with hope.

“I’m not very nice, though,” said Louis, “you were right.”

“Just because what I said was technically true -- which I don’t believe it is, for the record -- doesn’t make it okay to say shit like that. Especially, you know, on your birthday.” Liam grimaced, and Louis grinned just a little wider at the knowledge that, yeah, Liam knew full well what a jackass he’d been. “So, like, I really don’t want you storming out of places because of me, but I’ll probably not stop being a dick sometimes. What should I absolutely avoid saying?”

Louis seemed to think about that for a second, running a thumb under one of his braces absent-mindedly.

“Don’t patronize me,” he finally said. “Don’t insinuate that there has ever been anything but friendship between me and Harry. Don’t ever tell me I deserve something, even if I do, and most of all, try _really_ hard to avoid any sort of ‘daddy issues’ jokes.”

“I wish I had a pen,” Liam said, and Louis laughed, his expression softening for the first time. “I’ll do my best to remember those things, though. I’m usually good at avoiding peoples’ berserk buttons.”

“Never tell Niall his football team sucks,” said Louis.

Was that a joke? Liam thought it might be; Louis was clearly struggling with the conversation, but he certainly wasn’t the only one.

“I’m having trouble,” Liam blurted out, slightly frustrated, “figuring out how to _deal_ with you, Louis. Help me out, here.”

“Just treat me like a regular person,” Louis said with a self-deprecatory little smirk. “Or treat me like Harry.”

“Those are mutually exclusive terms.”

Louis laughed, surprised. “Ha, see, that was -- you made a joke, and it was... it was funny, sort of. Keep that up.” He glanced behind him, into what looked like a flat as sparsely decorated -- that is to say, not at all -- as Liam’s own was. “I’m not actually sure where Harry is at the moment, but --”

“He was at Niall’s all night, and now he’s at his mum’s,” Liam said, shifting the weight of the camera bag on his shoulder. Louis gave him a careful little smile.

“Ah, I remember Haz saying something about visiting family. My folks went on holiday with the girls, but I thought I’d be working Christmas so I said I couldn’t go with them. I got fired, of course, I have no bloody idea why this keeps _happening_ , but I’m sure you could provide me with a list.” At Liam’s noise of protest, Louis held a hand up. “It’s just a joke, Li.”

“Okay, well,” Liam said, “my family’s never been big on Christmas, so I’ve no plans -- mind if I come in?”

“What?” Louis looked at his hand, on the doorknob, as if he was only just realising he was standing in the entrance to his own flat. He stepped inside, gesturing for Liam to follow. “Yeah, come on in. You want some lunch?”

“No, thanks.”

The door closed behind Liam, and it felt confining. He almost didn’t trust himself in such a small space with Louis -- he wouldn’t want to start thinking like he had the day before, after all.

“You got me a present, though,” Louis said. “I didn’t... get you anything.”

“What, the Buzz PEZ dispenser? That’s really all right --”

“No, it isn’t.” Louis took hold of his elbow and dragged him into his flat, which Liam had only ever been to once or twice. For all the rent he appeared to pay, Harry sure didn’t spend much time here. “You’re at my place on the day Jesus was born or some shit, at least let me make you some lunch.”

How could Liam argue with that? He let himself be led to the kitchen, which was far messier than his own, and sat himself down while Louis rummaged around the cupboards for a frying pan.

“Why do you have your camera?” Louis asked over the clanging.

“I was taking some shots of Haz,” Liam said, setting his bag down on the floor. “He’s terrible, but I needed the distraction.”

“Are the pictures of me still on there?”

“Yeah, they are.”

Louis didn’t say anything, but his silence seemed smug. Liam looked into what he could see of the living room, and swallowed a distressed noise. There was a shiny keyboard all set up there, and since Harry had zero talent with musical instruments, that meant _Louis_ played, which.

Okay, so piano players were kind of a thing for Liam. Some people liked singers, some liked violinists, some liked bassists. It wasn’t a big deal -- tons of people played the piano, after all.

“What about the pictures I took of you?” Louis interrupted Liam’s inner disquiet over his instrument of choice. “Are they still on your camera?”

“I -- no, no, I deleted those.”

Pausing in the preparation of what appeared to be grilled cheese, Louis turned to glare at him. He had his hands on his hips and everything -- this kind of irritation Liam could deal with. It was kind of adorable. “What? Why’d you do that?”

“I don’t take good photos, Louis, and those ones didn’t... have very good connotations.” Liam looked down at his own hands. “I mean, I was pretty upset. I didn’t really want to keep those.”

“Why did you keep the ones of me, then?” Louis asked, taken aback.

“Because,” said Liam like it was obvious, “you look gorgeous even when you’re angry.”

That seemed to stump Louis for a moment. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but then decided whatever he’d wanted to say wasn’t worth it and turned back to the bread and cheese delicacy he was making.

“Okay,” Louis said. “I... okay. Next time, don’t delete them. I promise they’ll look good, all right?”

“Okay, I won’t.”

“Good,” said Louis, turning on the stove in a swift move. “ _The Grinch_ is on at noon, and since you probably relate to such a character on a spiritual level, I was thinking we could watch it.”

 

****

 

“Why are we going to Grimmy’s?” Liam complained, keeping step with Niall, who was too lazy to go for his driver’s license and therefore needed to walk absolutely everywhere. Liam thought it would’ve been simple to ask Harry for a ride, but Niall had wanted to avoid the New Year’s traffic. “Why do we _ever_ go to Grimmy’s? He can’t cook to save his life.”

“Yeah,” Niall agreed easily. “But he fancies Harry.”

Liam hopped onto the kerb. “And you’re... what, cool with that?” Sometimes Niall confused him -- he never really minded people flirting with Harry, or Harry flirting back. It didn’t make any sense; Zayn’s best guess had always been _maybe it’s ‘cos he knows Haz is his_ , but that sounded a bit too rom-com for Liam’s belief system.

“Sure, yeah. We get free food.”

“ _Terrible_ free food.”

“Yeah, but... you know,” Niall shrugged, kicking a Dr Pepper can into the gutter, “free.”

“You’re a sad, strange little man,” Liam said.

“And _you’re_ going to be totally polite to Grim, aren’t you? And Perrie, and -- everyone. All the time.” Niall gave him a shove that wasn’t very impressive due to Liam’s size.

“Yes.” Liam bumped him back, harder. “I will.”

“Even if we all get food poisoning and she’s a complete diva?”

“Especially then! I’ll need to make up for all your rudeness, then, wouldn’t I?”

“Even if Louis continues to be a prick?”

Liam’s first instinct was to ask how Niall knew about the brief falling-out, but he swallowed the question as soon as it came to him. It was a dumb question, anyhow. He nodded when he noticed Niall glancing his way; he was fully prepared to deal with Louis being a prick. At least, he hoped he was.

“Cool,” said Niall. “I always knew you two would get along.”

“So why didn’t _you_ introduce us?” Liam asked, exasperated. They reached the shabby little diner then, and Liam’s stomach grumbled like a protest. He liked Nick -- Grimmy -- well enough, sure, but the man should not be allowed to run a restaurant. Niall stopped and thought about the question for a long moment, one hand on the doorknob.

“Because... Hazza had a plan, and I didn’t want to mess with that.” He looked through the window panes in the door and grinned. “It worked out, though, yeah? You guys’re mates?”

“The matiest,” Liam sighed.

“Good.” Niall opened the door, the jangling bell a nice backdrop to his, “‘Cause he’s here.”

Liam was certain he made some sort of undignified noise in response, but it was lost in the cries of greeting, so he bit his bottom lip to keep from making it again and followed Niall inside. There were only a couple of tables in Grimmy’s, and a smattering of rickety chairs that were never in the same place whenever Liam came in. His friends -- sans a popstar, he noted -- were in the far corner, waving and smiling and looking, all in all, far too happy to be gathered in such a dive.

Niall greeted Harry with a clap on the shoulder like a bloke might say hello to his football team, and Harry turned his head to kiss Niall’s fingers while they were in reach.

“You have such a weird relationship,” Louis said, which was exactly what Liam had been thinking.

He looked -- kind of adorable. He was sitting cross-legged on one of the tables, shoes kicked to the floor to showcase his Christmas-tree socks. Liam went to reach for his camera and remembered with a frown that Zayn had forbid it, in case Perrie got uncomfortable.

“That’s not new information,” Zayn snorted. Liam turned to him and nearly shrieked with the force of his laughter. He coughed it back, choking on mild hysteria.

“What the bloody hell have you done to your head?” Niall demanded.

“Do you not like it?” Zayn asked, running his fingers self-consciously through the new blond chunk in his hair. Liam came closer so he could touch it, too. “I thought it would look... I don’t know, cool. Is it stupid? It’s stupid, isn’t it?”

“Not stupid,” Liam reassured him. He was playing around with the floppy bangs to see how the highlight would look in Zayn’s signature quiff, or some other styles. Liam was no expert on hair, but he could already tell how nicely it was going to contrast with Zayn’s colouring in harsh light.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “It’s very rockstar.”

Zayn glared at him, slapping Liam’s hands away from his head. “Stop taking the mick, Hazza.”

“M’not,” Harry said with a truly magnificent pout. While they bickered, Liam pulled a stray chair up to the table Louis was sat on.

“Hi,” he said, flicking Louis’ knee to draw his amused gaze from their friends. His eye-crinkles didn’t fade, he just kept smiling down at Liam like some kind of -- obviously flawed, temperamental, a little messed up -- angel. Liam’s heart ached just looking at him.

“Well, hello there,” said Louis. “Don’t you clean up nice.”

“Oh, yeah.” Liam looked down at the black button-down he’d thrown on at the last minute. Originally, it had been a birthday present for Zayn, but he’d misjudged the size of Zayn’s shoulders and didn’t keep the receipt, so it had ended up at the back of Liam’s closet for months. “It’s basically the nicest thing I own. Didn’t want Perrie to think I’m a slob.”

“Because she’s proper famous?”

After checking to make sure Zayn’s attention was still focused on arguing with Harry, Liam said, “Because Zayn is mad about her,” in a low voice.

Louis blinked. “I -- he is, at that. Yeah.”

“Where is Perrie, anyway?” Niall asked loudly, cutting into both conversations seamlessly. Zayn stopped in his imitation of Harry’s voice and pointed an accusing finger at Louis.

“Make one platypus joke, I dare you,” he said.

“Would I?”

“Yes, so don’t.” Zayn turned back to Niall, his forehead still scrunched up like he wasn’t completely sure his hair wasn’t being made fun of. Which was obviously ridiculous, as Zayn could probably dye his hair rainbow colours and still look amazing. “She’ll be here in, I don’t know, five or ten minutes?”

“Grimmy’ll be here soon, maybe,” Harry chimed in.

“Is he not... already here?” Liam asked.

“No, he gave me the keys. He might not make it, he said, because he’s at Caroline’s New Year’s party and you know how she is.”

Sometimes, when Liam thought his life was getting too strange for him to cope with, he liked listening to Harry talk. Not many people Liam knew could unwittingly charm a diner owner into handing over the premises on the biggest party night of _any_ year, but there was some kind of magic in Harry’s dimples that got people doing things they normally wouldn’t. Liam caught Louis’ eye and Louis made a silly face at him.

Zayn’s phone beeped. He snatched it off the table so quickly it was almost funny and said, “Okay, she’s on her way now. Nobody embarrass me.”

“Your hair is doing that for us, mate.”

“Not helping, Nialler,” Liam said. “We’ll be on our best behaviour, promise.”

“She might leave here liking you _more_ than she already does due to our influence,” Louis added with a cheeky grin. “Lord knows we’re irresistible.”

“Bollocks,” Zayn said, but he was looking a little calmer, at least. Suddenly, he sprang to his feet.. “I’m gonna go -- vomit, I think.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Harry.

“You don’t have to --”

“Nah, come on, nervous nausea is like, my specialty.”

Harry led Zayn to the loo, which Liam had never dared step foot in for fear of contracting every disease known to every generation of man, and Niall took the opportunity to put his feet up on Harry’s vacant seat. He and Louis launched immediately into Harry-vomiting stories, and Liam watched them in a kind of awe. If conversation was a skill, these two blokes were the most talented in it that Liam had ever seen. He felt like he was intruding -- but when he went to stand up, ostensibly to check on Zayn, Niall shook his head.

“You stay,” he said, swinging his feet back onto the floor. “I’m going to go see if there’s anything edible or alcoholic hiding in the kitchen.”

“You’ll have to look pretty hard,” said Louis.

“Yeah, I know, I’ve eaten here before.” Niall stood and ducked into the back room that was masquerading as a kitchen, leaving Liam alone in the dim-lighted room with Louis.

There was a moment of silence that felt like actual ages to Liam. Finally he looked up at Louis, surprised that he was still smiling. Liam smiled back tiredly and nearly jumped out of his skin when Louis’ hand touched the top of his head. When he didn’t react, Louis started carding his fingers through Liam’s hair like this was a perfectly normal thing to do. Then again, he did live with Harry.

“I think my hair’s too short,” Liam said.

“Not really. At least it’s not gelled up like Zayn’s usually is.”

Liam leaned into Louis’ touch a bit, which he was embarrassed about but couldn’t help. It felt _really_ nice. He now understood how Harry could curl up in Niall’s lap for hours and nudge against his hand like a cat who was still learning how to be human.

They didn’t say a word. Normally this would worry Liam, because Louis had spoken so easily with Niall, so what was wrong with him? Except that it was hard to be worried when someone was _petting_ you.

The jangling bell was what broke the quiet, and Liam raised his head properly to get a good look at the girl coming in.

He’d watched Perrie on the X Factor, of course, and voted for her group whenever he remembered to, but somehow the cameras hadn’t captured the buzzing energy that Liam could see all the way from his seat. She didn’t acknowledge them at first, too preoccupied with unwinding her scarf and pulling her knitted cap off -- and then, of course, fixing her frizzy mess of hat-hair. When she caught sight of Liam and Louis she grinned wide, nearly bouncing over to the table they were at.

“Hi, I’m Perrie,” she said. Liam loved her accent, and seeing the whole picture -- her smile, her voice, her jittery movements -- was enough for him to understand Zayn’s obsession. “Are you lot friends of Zayn’s? Is he here, even? He told me he was here.”

“He’s in the bathroom,” said Liam, pointing vaguely.

“I’m Louis, and this is Liam,” Louis piped up. He reached out and she climbed onto the table with him to accept the handshake. They looked like they were acting out Sixteen Candles.

“Hi,” she said again.

Really, the amount she fidgeted was amazing. Liam had thought that _Harry_ had a hard time sitting still, but that was nothing to the way Perrie Edwards was practically vibrating. He didn’t know if it was from being on stage all the time or if it was just the way she was, but it was fascinating. He was so caught up in watching her that he lost complete track of the conversation.

“How do you ever do photoshoots?” Liam interrupted. Perrie looked at him in bewilderment. “I mean, you’re... buzzing.”

“Am I?” she asked, surprised.

“Liam’s a photographer,” Louis said, “he notices things like that.”

“Oh, well, I never really thought about it, but yeah, photoshoots are a nightmare. Sometimes Jesy’ll strap me down just to make sure I don’t wander off.”

Harry’s voice came out then, amused. “Who’s strapping what down?”

He was bringing Zayn back into the room, a hand on his shoulder to steer him. Liam already knew what Zayn would be looking like -- pale and slightly green, but happy -- so he watched Perrie’s face to look for any subtle changes in her expression.

Well, he needn’t have worried about ‘subtle’, because her entire face lit up like a Christmas tree upon Zayn’s appearance.

“There you are,” she said, hopping down from the table to launch herself into his arms. Harry stepped back, sniggering, and Liam hid his ridiculously large smile behind a hand. It was so nice, Zayn’s being happy, and he hadn’t been sure what to expect on Perrie’s end, but she seemed to be just as happy. Which was, of course, nothing less than what Liam wanted for one of his best friends. Zayn bit his lip and ducked his face into Perrie’s neck to hide from Harry’s barely-concealed laughter.

Niall ambled in then, munching on a pear. “What’s the commotion?”

“You know how Zayn’s totally stupid over her?” Harry asked, and Niall nodded. “Well, it appears to be a two-way street.”

“Shut up,” said Zayn. His voice was muffled by Perrie’s hair.

“Aww,” Niall said. “That’s nauseatingly cute.”

At Zayn’s attempt (and fail) at a glare, Liam couldn’t hold back his delighted laughter anymore. Harry dimpled at him and Niall joined in, but Louis touched his shoulder with two questioning fingers and Perrie seemed to think she was being made fun of, so she unwound her arms from Zayn’s neck.

“Sorry,” Liam said, still chuckling. “It’s just... really great to see Zayn so happy. Sorry.”

Perrie turned and gave him an absolutely brilliant smile, and she was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger, but it still warmed Liam’s heart to see. Louis left his fingers pressing into Liam’s shoulder, which Liam was also pretty pleased about.

“There isn’t food in the kitchen,” Niall said, apropos of nothing. “As totally unsurprising as that is, I thought I’d mention it so that if everyone’s hungry we know to, like, order a pizza or something.”

“You want to order a pizza and eat it in a diner?” Louis asked from over Liam’s shoulder. He sounded incredulous, but Liam wasn’t all that shocked.

“Yeah, why not?”

The question stumped Louis. It was quiet for a moment, and then Harry pulled out his mobile.

Liam wasn’t very good at conversation, he was well aware of this fact. He didn’t, however, realise that Zayn was pretty bad himself when he was around a pretty girl. Niall and Louis -- and Harry, once he got off the phone with the nearest pizza place -- immediately capitalized on his silence to tell as many embarrassing stories as they could remember. A few of the stories Liam was fairly certain they made up, but Zayn never contradicted them, just sat with his head in his hands while Perrie stroked the back of his neck comfortingly and snickered to herself. Liam was content to join in on the laughter and keep all _his_ Zayn stories for a later date.

It only took ten minutes for the pizza to arrive, which Liam thought must be a record. Niall declared it magic, while Zayn pointed out, red-faced, that the pizzeria was two doors down. Not seeming to care about the unnecessary delivery charge, Harry fished some notes from his pocket and handed them to the grumpy, hipster pizza guy. He left without a word, and Niall got up to take the boxes from Harry.

A chivalrous move to someone who didn’t know them well, like say Perrie, but Liam knew full well it was to prevent Harry from just opening the top box and eating most of it stood by the door. The guy was a bottomless pit.

Louis was instructed to get down from the table, because nobody wanted his feet near their food. He exclaimed, “so sit at another table!”, but did as he was told. Niall dropped the boxes where Louis had vacated, and immediately stacked three slices of pepperoni on top of each other to bring to his seat.

Not wanting to be stuck with Hawaiian, which wasn’t Liam’s favourite, he elbowed Zayn out of the way and snagged a couple of pepperoni slices, looking around for plates. There weren’t any, of course, but he didn’t want to get sauce on his only nice shirt, so he took a handful of napkins from the pile to use as a makeshift plate. He sat down, and not three seconds later he had Louis’ feet in his lap. Louis had already taken his pizza and had apparently decided that Liam made as good a footrest as any.

“Your feet reek,” Liam said, but didn’t shove them off. Instead he shuffled a bit so he could get more comfortable and put his pizza on top of Louis’ calves. “Don’t move around too much.”

“I’m good at not moving,” Louis said.

“I know.” Liam grinned at him, and Louis smiled back as well as he could with crust between his teeth.

“You know, Lou,” Harry spoke up, having claimed the entire Hawaiian pizza to himself, “of all the things about you that I don’t understand, of which there are many, I think this is the weirdest.”

“What is?”

Harry pointed at the backwards slice in his mouth, which Louis immediately removed. “How on earth do you eat a pizza crust-first?”

“The crust is the best bit!”

“Yes, but your fingers get all saucy and it can’t be easy to hold onto --”

“Look, I don’t comment on how you eat everything tongue-first, do I? Leave my eating habits alone.”

“Besides, Harry,” Zayn chimed in, one of his arms around Perrie’s shoulders and his face still flushed from embarrassment. “Your boyfriend is the one who makes a pizza sandwich out of _his_ slices.”

Everyone looked to Niall, who jumped when he realised the attention of the room was on him. He brought what indeed looked like a pizza sandwich away from his mouth to say, “Okay, I got distracted. I admit it, I repent. So what did I miss?”

Perrie giggled, and Zayn gave her a soppy look that Liam dearly wished he could’ve captured -- both for future blackmailing purposes and because it was just, well, really cute.

“We’re making fun of eating habits,” Liam said.

“Specifically Harry’s affinity for using his tongue as a spoon.” Louis had to crane his neck to glare properly at Harry, and he nearly displaced Liam’s pizza. Liam squawked and gripped Louis’ calf tightly to keep his pizza from falling onto the disgusting floor. When Louis noticed, he smiled in an apologetic sort of way, but Liam kept one of his hands firmly on Louis’ leg. For the pizza’s sake. Of course.

Niall shrugged. “It’s habit, I suppose.”

“From blowjobs,” Harry clarified, just in case someone hadn’t gotten that.

“Oh,” Perrie said, blinking. “ _Oh_ , okay.”

The way Zayn grinned into her hair made Liam’s heart hurt. It wasn’t often he missed Danielle, but surrounded by couples as he was, he felt the absence of her like a phantom limb. Louis caught his eye and made a silly face, like he knew exactly what Liam was thinking.

All right, so he was surrounded by couples, but he had Louis with him, too. That was -- it was good, Liam thought, because Louis was talking to him and petting his hair and using him as furniture, and Liam was really glad to have him as a mate. He was bewildered by Harry’s control issues but glad for them, too, because when he thought about it carefully he could see _so many ways_ he and Louis could’ve gotten off on the wrong foot and stayed there.

“What’re we doing for midnight?” Louis asked, looking away and shaking Liam out of his what-ifs.

“Staying here, I hope,” Perrie said. “It’s mad out there.”

“It’s gross in here,” Liam complained, but nobody paid him any mind. They were busy agreeing with Perrie that Outside was dangerous and Inside was safe, even if Inside happened to be Grimmy’s. He sighed, taking a big bite of his last slice so he could avoid talking aloud any more. He was in a group of conversationalists and he might as well leave them to it.

“What time is it?” Zayn asked, and Niall said, “11:47”, without looking at a clock. Perrie double-checked -- a rookie move, Niall was kind of a genius when it came to knowing the time -- and confirmed it.

“Are you gonna finish that before midnight?” Niall asked Harry, eyeing the mostly-empty box of Hawaiian pizza. “You know I don’t like the taste of pineapple. If you aren’t done in five minutes I’m not kissing you.”

“I’ll kiss Lou, then,” Harry said through a slice.

Briefly, Liam tightened his hold on Louis’ calf. No, he did not want to see that, and judging by the expression on Niall’s face, neither did he. Louis, who was a bit more sensitive than Harry was to things like jealousy, shook his head.

“Liam’s my midnight smooch, sorry, Haz,” he said, winking at Liam.

Harry pouted, but closed the pizza box and stood up, bringing it into the kitchen with him. Grimmy was going to be really confused to find actual food in there later. Liam finished his own pizza and put the now-greasy napkins onto the nearest table, but he didn’t want to let go of Louis just yet. Louis didn’t seem to mind when, instead of taking his hand away, he wrapped the other around Louis’ socked foot.

“Does anyone have gum?” Harry asked petulantly upon coming back into the room.

“Aww,” said Perrie. “I’ve got some, love.”

Just like that, she was wrapped around Harry’s finger. Liam grinned at Zayn, who rolled his eyes; Harry accepted a stick of gum from the popstar with an expression appropriate to a child denied a McDonald’s Happy Meal. He chewed it, glaring at an unconcerned Niall all the while, and Perrie smiled at them like they were the cutest thing she’d ever seen.

“You’re a terrible person,” Harry reminded Niall.

Niall said, “Love you too”, and Liam found himself baffled, as he always was, by the way they interacted. How had their relationship survived a year and a half?

 _Love_ , Zayn would say, because he was a total sap like that. He didn’t like to admit that he was, but Liam knew the truth.

It was obvious to everyone now, though, in the way he looked at Perrie, the way he touched her -- like if he didn’t rub her shoulder or twirl a strand of her hair around his finger every few seconds, she’d disappear into thin air -- the way his voice sounded when he talked to her. Liam had never heard him sound like that, sound like he was so _awed_ by someone that he just couldn’t believe they were next to him. It was ridiculously nice to see. Zayn had been single as long as Liam had known him, and while that was all well and good, he’d also never looked so happy. He was practically glowing.

Liam looked away from Zayn and Perrie and saw that Louis was giving him a confused sort of side-eye. Okay, maybe it was weird to just sit there smiling at your friend and his girl for as long as Liam had, but he was -- he was just so _happy_ for them.

It wasn’t really the time or place to explain himself, though, so he just quirked his mouth a little and shrugged his shoulders. Now he felt really self-conscious with his hands on Louis’ legs, so he pushed them off and stood up, pretending like he had to stretch when in reality he was just starting to remember who and where he was. He didn’t check Louis’ expression, but Zayn looked exasperated.

“Midnight’s coming up soon,” Niall said suddenly.

“Pucker up,” Harry said. He dropped into Niall’s lap in a movement so graceful Liam wondered if he practiced. Niall held him there easily, grinning.

“Bad luck to kiss before midnight,” said Zayn.

“Is that a thing?” Louis asked, his voice lilting in a really obnoxious sort of way. Liam thought it was precious.

“I don’t know, I just don’t want to watch them snog. Again.”

“Why are all their public snogs surrounded by pizza boxes?” Liam wondered aloud.

Louis barked out a laugh, and Liam tried very hard not to smile. Zayn’s objections were pointless, anyway, because Niall and Harry were already attached at the mouth, grinning in a way that must have made it terribly difficult to kiss properly.

“Is it midnight?” Perrie asked.

She went to check her phone, but Zayn -- in a move taken straight from a rom-com, Liam was sure -- cupped her jaw with both hands and kissed her anyway. It was all very sweet.

Except that now, Liam was the single idiot standing in an empty restaurant while his friends were adorable around him. He felt like that could be some kind of metaphor for his life since he’d met Harry, actually. Not wanting to be that idiot _plus_ the creep who watched his friends make out, he looked to Louis, who was sitting with his feet on his chair, knees pulled to his chest. Why he always had to be in some kind of cute foldable position, Liam wasn’t entirely sure. Probably to give him heart problems at an early age, or something.

When Louis noticed him staring, he waggled his eyebrows in a really exaggerated _come on, then_ sort of way, and -- okay, Liam knew it was a joke. He wasn’t completely socially inept. He knew Louis hadn’t been serious about the ‘midnight smooch’ thing, and he definitely knew that Louis didn’t want to kiss him now.

On the other hand, though, he _really_ wanted to kiss Louis. Just once.

So, he supposed his feet moved faster than his brain did, or something he could blame it on -- anything but the fact that he’d totally knowingly bent down and planted his lips onto Louis’.

Louis’ lips. Lips that were, like, weirdly soft. For a bloke’s. Okay, well, for anyone’s. As soon as he’d done it Liam realised what an idiot he was.

He pulled away as fast as he’d moved in, grinning like he’d just taken the joke another step further, and got out of Louis’ personal space rather quick. He’d just -- he’d kissed Louis. Without asking. Louis was slowly but surely turning Liam into one of those douches in sappy romantic dramas.

Louis, for his part, just looked a bit astonished. It took a moment, but he smiled back at Liam.

Smiling. Okay, yeah, continuing the joke.

After a few seconds of just stupidly grinning at each other, Louis looked over at Harry and Niall, who hadn’t noticed a thing outside of their little bubble.

“You lot just gonna keep going, then?” Louis asked, loudly.

Zayn and Perrie broke apart, embarrassed and giggling -- Zayn would deny the latter -- but Harry only pulled away from Niall long enough to say, “They say what you do at midnight is what you’ll be doing the rest of the year, so, yes, we are.”

“Fair enough,” said Louis.

Perrie was looking at the entwined couple fondly, which Liam was also a bit jealous about through the haze of emotions concerning Louis and lips and lips of Louis. Liam was Zayn’s best friend, he ought to be her favourite.

“What’s their story, then?” she asked. “How long’ve they been together?”

“Eighteen months,” everyone chorused. For full disclosure, Liam added, “And twenty days.”

“Oh, that’s adorable,” sighed Perrie. Zayn pulled a face. She leaned forward a bit, looking between Liam and Louis with great interest. “What about you two? Have you been together that long?”

Liam nearly choked.

“I -- no, we’re not, um --”

“Oh! Er, sorry to --”

“No, it isn’t a problem, I just -- I wanted to --”

“Give me another week, though,” Louis interrupted the flustered mess of dialogue Liam was attempting to have, “and check back in. Answer might change.”

 

****

 

Liam woke up on his sofa. Again. He tried not to let it bother him -- he’d insisted on Louis taking his bed, after all, it was his own bloody fault he was sore -- and stretched, popping out some of the kinks in his back. He felt like he hadn’t done any exercise in ages, and it was easy as breathing, dropping into a few quick push-ups. When he stood up, feeling the strain in his arms as he raised them above his head, Louis was standing by the kitchen, a pair of glasses Liam had never seen before perched on his nose.

 _Glasses_.

“Christ,” he said, jumping back even though Louis wasn’t anywhere near him. “Don’t _do_ that.”

“I... what?” Louis was staring. Probably it was a bit weird to see someone roll out of bed -- well, couch -- and immediately begin doing push-ups.

“Don’t scare me like that,” Liam repeated.

“Okay,” said Louis.

He sounded distracted, and he still wasn’t looking Liam in the eye, which was a bit weird. Then, Liam looked down and remembered that he’d yet to put a shirt on. No wonder Louis was uncomfortable. Liam mumbled an apology, snatching his button-down from the night before and pulling it on. He didn’t do it up, because it was far too early in the morning to navigate buttons, so he just hoped Louis didn’t mind too much. When he looked back at his houseguest, Louis was looking determinedly at the far wall.

“I’m making toast,” Louis said, “my first meal of 2013.”

“And a good one.”

A long, awkward silence followed Liam’s sort-of joke. Last night -- or, rather, earlier that morning -- they’d been too tired to really exchange words beyond ‘can I stay at yours?’ and ‘sure, you can have my bed’, and now Liam was struggling to remember how he was supposed to converse with Louis.

Treat him like a normal person, he’d said. Right. Liam could do that.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Liam said, shrugging his shirt off again. There wasn’t a point in wearing it to take five steps to the bathroom. “So I don’t need any toast just yet.”

“Well, I’ll make you toast when you get out, then,” Louis said. “But, er, could you make sure you’re dressed?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t want you to burn the place down out of envy.”

Liam clapped Louis on the shoulder as he walked by, and pushed down the feeling of hurt he got when Louis visibly flinched. He knew Louis wasn’t comfortable with him walking around shirtless -- he honestly could not recall _why_ , considering he lived with Harry Styles -- but he could deal with it. It was morning, Liam needed a shower (and a proper workout, but he’d do that later), and it was 2013. That, alone, was sort of amazing; the world was meant to end, was it not? He thought that would’ve been a damn shame, and not just because of the whole apocalypse-and-everyone-he-loved-dying thing.

He wouldn’t have known Louis. And, okay, he could admit to himself as he stepped into the Dante’s Inferno that was his shower, Louis wasn’t perfect. He was obnoxious, irritating, easily upset, and bossy. On the other hand, he was gorgeous, talented, funny as hell, and hadn’t punched Liam in the face for --

Kissing him.

Which Liam had forgotten about until just now. He made a weird noise, a sort of high-pitched whine, and flailed his arms dangerously. A bottle of shower gel fell with a clank, but he didn’t pick it up.

So, he’d kissed Louis. No bloody _wonder_ he was acting oddly this morning.

It was fine, it was all going to be alright. So long as he didn’t make an arse out of himself when he joined Louis for breakfast, there wouldn’t be any cause to freak out. Yeah. Except for how all he wanted to do, now, was try kissing him again, just to see...

He wasn’t actually certain what he was trying to see. He didn’t want to think about it too hard, because he’d spent a couple hours of his life studying Louis’ face, and he could picture quite clearly the alarmed disgust that would make an appearance as soon as Louis realised he wasn’t joking around. All he had to do was... pretend it hadn’t happened.

Easy enough, probably. It wasn’t like Louis was going to bring it up, so Liam just had to avoid looking at his lips too much. Okay, yeah. He could -- he could totally do that. Just as soon as he was done panicking, he would step out of the shower spray and eat the toast Louis had promised him.

Liam thought about soothing things for a few minutes; the chai tea Ruth liked that his mum couldn’t stand, really good back massages, the way he felt after smoking his first bowl. He didn’t wash his hair, because he felt like in this state he might lose an eye trying, and by the time he switched the shower off he wasn’t any cleaner than when he’d come in, but he was a hell of a lot calmer. He towelled off quickly and, when he opened the door to find some clean clothes, he checked that Louis wasn’t within eyeshot before practically running to his bedroom.

He wasn’t overreacting, he didn’t think. He hadn’t tried escaping out a window yet, which he was sure Zayn would see as progress.

Pulling a sweatshirt over his head, Liam jumped at the sound of Louis’ voice calling through his flat.

“Are you allergic to peanuts? I’m making your toast!”

Liam could totally do this. He could act normal for one day, probably. He yelled back, “Of course I’m not, why would I have peanut butter in my kitchen if I were allergic to it?”

He swore he could hear Louis roll his eyes from all the way down the hall. Tugging on a pair of jogging pants that had been half under his bed, Liam decided he was dressed enough for New Year’s Day and headed back down the hall. As he walked closer to the kitchen, reminding himself not to act weird all the while, Louis’ voice got louder.

“You ought to be grateful I asked, Li, I don’t wanna murder you or anything!”

“That’s comforting,” Liam said upon coming into his kitchen. Louis started, getting peanut butter on one of his thumbs because of it.

He was still wearing glasses; Liam hadn’t imagined them. To Liam’s great dismay, Louis gave him a quick smile and brought his thumb to his mouth in order to suck the peanut butter off. It was really distracting -- he almost missed Louis’ next question entirely.

“What were you planning on doing today?”

“I was thinking about fixing my site up,” Liam said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But, er, I have no idea how to do that. I’m hopeless with html. What about you?”

“Well, I thought I’d stay here, if that’s okay.”

Liam smiled and nodded, hoping that would convey his permission better than words would. He wasn’t going to attempt sentences regarding Louis sticking around anytime soon -- he was afraid of what might come out of his mouth. Louis grinned back at him, then turned to finish buttering the toast. A few moments later, he handed Liam the plate with a proud beam.

“Thanks,” Liam said, because that’s what you said when someone handed you food. Even if it was only toast.

He stuck a piece between his teeth to prevent any more words from escaping. Louis collapsed into one of his dining chairs, obviously waiting for Liam to join him. He hadn’t cleaned up the mess he’d made on the counter, but Liam didn’t care about things like that at the moment.

Liam sat at the table, too, chewing absently on the toast. The peanut butter ratio was way off what Liam liked, but he wasn’t going to start another argument over something so dumb.

Remembering the first argument brought up a question in Liam’s mind about the whole situation.

“Why are you staying here?” he asked through his toast. Louis just laughed, so he swallowed and repeated himself for clarity’s sake. “Have you been kicked out again? Because Niall has a place all to himself and it doesn’t make sense for them to use your place, yeah?”

Louis looked very interested in the cuff of his shirt. “No, I guess -- I guess I just want to.”

“Oh,” Liam said. He didn’t completely understand why someone like Louis would actively choose to spend the day with him, but he didn’t want to make the day in question more awkward by asking. After waiting a couple of seconds, to see if Louis would say anything, Liam added, “I don’t mind at all. I guess I’m just -- confused, a bit. Why does Harry sexile you so often? Actually, why does he even live with you? Niall’s house is big, by student standards. And, you know. Empty.”

“Well, our flat is closer to the college,” said Louis, “which is why they use it so much. And Harry lives with me because... okay, my job-hopping translates, often, into a lack of money. He’s good about paying rent when I can’t.”

“That’s... really nice of him,” said Liam. He must’ve sounded suspicious, because Louis started chuckling.

“He’s my best friend,” was all Louis said, though, smiling down at his own hands.

Liam smiled, too, and continued eating his -- admittedly terrible -- breakfast. He didn’t respond, and Louis didn’t seem to mind staying quiet, so they sat in relative silence for a few nice minutes.

That was something Liam remembered learning early on: Louis was good at quiet. (And staying still, and picking movies that Liam adored, and eating piles of Harry’s mashed potatoes, and playing piano, and any other number of things that made Liam’s heart melt.)

(However, let the record show that he was _not_ good at breakfast.)

Quiet wasn’t something Liam had a lot of in his life, and it was mostly limited to Zayn. Who was, arguably, the best friend he’d ever had. So maybe the whole not-conversing thing was a good sign.

When Liam stood to take his plate to the sink, Louis’ head shot up to follow his movement.

“You said your blog needed fixing?” Louis asked.

“Er, yes,” said Liam, making a conscious decision to wash his plate later, when he wasn’t in danger of breaking it due to anxiety over Louis. “Well, no. My site needs fixing, my blog is fine.”

“Show me to your internet device.” Louis stood up, grinning. “I’m fairly good at html.”

Of course he was. He was good at everything.

Liam told himself not to be bitter about something he had zero control over and led Louis into the living room. His laptop was perched precariously on the endtable where he’d tossed it before falling asleep on the sofa, so he sat down and opened it up. He fought down a blush when he realised Louis was watching him, and, okay, maybe he shouldn’t have let Niall change his password from Danielle’s birthday after the breakup, since ‘sexgodstyles’ was a bit awkward to type out in front of Louis.

“I’m not going to ask,” Louis snorted.

“Niall,” said Liam.

“I said I wasn’t asking, now hand it over.”

Quickly bringing up his site in Chrome, Liam did as Louis asked. Louis cracked his knuckles before diving in, and the whole picture he made -- what with his glasses and the laptop and the concentration evident between his eyebrows -- was an endearing one, and not one Liam ever expected to see on Louis.

Usually, when Zayn muddled about with the customizing, Liam would wander off in a bored trance, but watching Louis do it was fascinating somehow. Liam wanted to ask a billion questions, like where did Louis learn all the complicated javascript, and, wait, how had he made a category for Eleanor like that, but he didn’t want to be a nuisance. When Louis added his own name to the list of models with a smug look, Liam couldn’t help but laugh.

“Okay, now I definitely need to start paying you,” said Liam.

Louis just sighed, all long-sufferingly like he was dealing with a small child instead of a grown-ass man. “Honestly, Li, I don’t _need_ to be paid. This modelling thing is a hobby, not my job.”

“But...” Liam frowned, thinking back to his first introductions to Louis. “Harry said you wanted a job.”

“Well, Harry lied,” said Louis. “He does that a lot.”

He was doing something now with the font formatting that Liam didn’t understand -- he hadn’t realised there was anything wrong with the fonts, actually -- so Liam ignored the screen and instead stared at the side of Louis’ face.

“So,” he said, “you don’t want a job?”

“Hell no, have you seen how fast I go through jobs?” Louis asked, straightening his glasses. “Nope, I don’t want to lose this. I don’t --”

He cut himself off, suddenly very interested in the size of the FAQ headings.

“You don’t what?” Liam prompted him.

“It’s not just -- it isn’t just the job I don’t want to lose, okay? I’ve gotten pretty fond of you.” As far as Liam has been able to tell, Louis wasn’t the type of person who blushed, but he had eye-contact-avoidance down to a fine art. Liam _was_ the blushing type, though, so he did, biting his lip.

“That’s good,” he said. “I’ve gotten pretty fond of you, as well.”

“Can I ask you a question, now?”

“Shoot,” said Liam, making a dorky finger-gun. Louis didn’t see it.

"Why did you kiss me?" Louis asked the laptop screen. The weirdest thing happened inside Liam’s chest -- like his heart was trying to do a double-take.

"Er, it was midnight, so..." he trailed off, not actually sure how to respond to a question like that. Why had he kissed Louis? Well, he’d kissed Louis because he was _there_ and beautiful and making silly faces and wearing socks with Christmas trees on them and he’d wanted to. An answer like that might be a bit creepy, though.

"So you kissed me because you wanted a person to kiss at midnight, that's all?"

Liam looked away, studying the wall carefully. Not that it mattered, as Louis was focused entirely on making the header of Liam’s site red. "Well, no, see... it's..."

"Use your words, Li,” said Louis.

The nickname was what made Liam think that, hey, how much did he have to lose by telling the truth? Well, Louis’ tentative friendship and possibly his life if Harry found out, but he couldn’t imagine keeping a secret like that under wrap for however long he stayed friends with Louis -- it felt, oddly, like a betrayal of trust that hadn’t been established yet. He took a deep breath before responding, which caused him to yawn slightly through his words.

"It was midnight, and I, uh, I liked you.” Liam inspected the chipped nail on his left thumb like it was his tether to the world. “I kissed you because I wanted to, sorry."

Louis was quiet. For a really, really long time.

Granted, Liam wasn’t the best judge of timekeeping at the moment, but even he could tell that this was unnatural, this stretch of nothing but the soft click-clack of his keyboard and the humming of his refrigerator. He chanced a glance at Louis, but his expression was fixed in place.

Louis almost looked _bored_ , and it was only the stiffness of his shoulders that gave away any tension.

Blushing furiously and contemplating buying a plane ticket to Canada to live a new life as a lumberjack, Liam stared at his own kneecaps. Was plaid strictly for lumberjack _shirts_ , or could he mix it up with a plaid neckerchief or something? He didn't know, and Louis still hadn’t fucking looked away from the laptop even though his fingers weren’t moving anymore, and it was getting kind of hard to breathe.

Liam’s heart felt like it was trying to bail out of the situation entirely; pounding against his ribcage like the gorilla Niall had wanted to free from the zoo.

Finally Louis spoke, in such a low voice that Liam almost missed it.

"Past tense?" he asked. Liam didn’t say anything, but his confusion must’ve been evident since Louis clarified, "Do you like me any less since midnight, or?"

"No,” Liam said honestly. “Actually if - I guess, like, if anything? I like you more."

"I -- really?" Louis’ voice was even smaller.

Well, if Liam was going to make a grave for his and Louis’ friendship, he might as well make it six feet deep.

"Yeah, I've, er, had it pretty bad for you for a while. Like a longish while."

"How long?"

"Approximately, since you first forced me into posing for my own bloody camera,” said Liam. Louis looked up at him with a startled expression, but quickly turned his attention back to the laptop’s screen. “Look, I -- I'm sorry that I've made things weird, now, we can ignore me, lots of people do, we can --"

While Liam babbled, Louis closed his laptop and put it on the endtable, cutting Liam off mid-sentence with, “D’you still want to kiss me?”

What a dumb question.

"Well... yeah,” Liam said, baffled. “I thought that much was obvious by now?"

"I wasn't joking about wanting to be with you," Louis said in a rushed voice, "if you weren't joking about the kiss."

Liam blinked. He had to resist the urge to text Harry and ask what the hell Louis meant by that. Louis looked him in the eye, now, his expression all careful and ridiculous-looking in his sharp bone structure. His glasses -- that Liam was going to break soon out of pure distress -- acted as a kind of guard.

The wariness there surprised Liam into saying, "I definitely wasn't joking."

"Okay," said Louis.

Liam was having a hard time understanding this conversation as a whole, but he'd heard enough to know that, if he kissed Louis now, he wouldn't be shoved away. Which led him to the question 'why aren't we kissing, then?'

"You tell me," Louis laughed, and, oh, Liam had said that last bit aloud. They must have sat for half a minute in silence before a voice in Liam's head that sounded an awful lot like Zayn pointed out that, _hey, dumbass, that's your cue_.

He smiled sheepishly and leaned in, hands clasped in his lap, to press his lips against Louis' for the second time. He did a quick mental checklist of Louis' lips: still soft, rather warmer than Liam expected, and -- responsive.

Louis wound his hands into the front of Liam’s sweatshirt and held tight, like he was afraid Liam was going to pull away from the kiss. Which was probably the stupidest thing Liam could be expected to do in such a situation, but he wasn’t about to object to the contact. Louis didn’t screw around, which at this point was a definite plus; the sooner Louis’ tongue was in his mouth, the happier Liam would be.

When he made to push Louis back into the cushions, though, Louis stopped doing the really great thing he’d been doing with his tongue and said, “We’re not fifteen, for God’s sake. Li, you have a bed we can use.”

Liam mentally judged the distance he would have to go without kissing Louis to make this ‘bed’ thing happen and immediately declared it a waste of energy. Louis laughed, surprised, and Liam swallowed the sound, pushing Louis onto his back. He probably should’ve expected the teeth on his upper lip, but it wasn’t entirely unpleasant, so he didn’t complain. His arms were already starting to ache from holding his weight off of Louis, but, hey, he’d wanted a proper workout today. This was a decent alternative.

He must’ve been a little obvious about the ‘not wanting his body mass to crush Louis when he’d finally gotten to the kissing’ thing, because Louis made an impatient groaning noise and pulled at the front of Liam’s shirt until he gave in and collapsed onto Louis. Apart from a quiet _oof_ , Louis seemed pleased with the situation.

“If we’re going to make out on the sofa like teenagers,” Louis said when Liam pulled back to get a bit of a breather -- not from the kissing itself, but the awe of _who_ he was kissing -- “I’m going to give you a massive lovebite.”

“Oh,” was Liam’s intelligent contribution to the topic, and when Louis arched his body up to attach his teeth to a rather sensitive juncture on Liam’s neck, he said it again.

 

****

 

“You know, for a while there,” Liam said, his nose buried in Louis’ hair, “I thought you were really perfect. Like, literally perfect.”

Louis grinned. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Liam. They were still entangled on his godawful sofa, but they’d managed to sit up and stop snogging like teenagers -- at least, for a brief interlude. He giggled at the lines on Louis’ cheekbones, imprinted there by his glasses thanks to all the kissing. He lost his train of thought for a moment, but Louis kind of needed to hear this, in case he decided having such a creep as a -- a _boyfriend_ would be a terrible idea. “Yeah, but you aren’t. And that’s -- better, I think, you’re a bit more human now.”

“What was I before?” Louis asked, huffing a laugh. The circles his fingers were tracing on Liam’s wrist were making it really hard to think.

“Er, a robot the other guys created, a Roman sun god, or an alien. Jury’s still out.”

It wasn’t even a joke, really, but Louis threw his head back and _laughed_ like it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. Liam was so caught up in watching him laugh that he temporarily forgot who and where he was. God, but he wanted to kiss him.

Wait -- he could do that. Liam was allowed to kiss Louis now, so he did, interrupting the gorgeous laughter to get another taste of him.

Louis made a small, reluctant noise and pulled away. “C’mon, Li, my lips are getting chapped.” Undeterred, Liam pressed his mouth to Louis’ jaw; Louis sighed, sounding both annoyed and content. “Liam.” He didn’t move away, though, so Liam kept kissing along his neck. “ _Liam_. Stop that, I had a point I needed to make.”

Blowing out an irritated breath and causing Louis to shiver, Liam obeyed.

“So make it, then,” he said.

Louis blinked at him.

“I -- right, yes, right, my point.” He took off his glasses to clean them with the hem of his jumper and, possibly, to avoid looking Liam in the eye. “Well, see, I didn’t actually think all that much of you at first? I mean, you were nice enough, of course, but Hazza hadn’t introduced us and I thought -- I thought there must’ve been a reason. I thought we were, like, unmeshable, and he was doing me a favour. Which was a huge mistake, might I add.”

“Was it?”

Grinning, Louis kissed the inside of Liam’s wrist. “Yeah. It wasn’t ‘til after I started to _get_ you that I was like, okay, what is going on here? Maybe for once Harry didn’t get a social situation right. I told him as much, too.”

Liam tried to picture Louis saying that to Harry and snorted.

“What did he say to that, then?” he asked, imagining the offended expression Harry must’ve appropriated.

“Well, er,” said Louis, “I left the room after that, so I’m not -- but now that I can tell _this_ was his plan? Us? Now that I know that... well, I think he may have done some kind of celebratory touchdown dance.” That didn’t sound entirely implausible.

Giggling at the idea of Harry doing a proper touchdown dance, Liam nosed into the soft hair above Louis’ ear. He inhaled like a weirdo, fascinated by the way Louis kind of _smelled_ like Liam, probably from sleeping on his pillows. He remembered Harry saying that Niall smelled like ‘home’, and Liam didn’t -- he wasn’t sure if he was feeling something that big, yet, because at the moment Louis literally smelled like Liam’s home, and the idea of liking someone that much was... scary. How had Harry avoiding suffocating under all those _feelings_?

Harry. Right.

“Ugh,” Liam said, probably too loud considering his mouth was so close to Louis’ ear. “We’ll have to tell him at some point, won’t we? Haz’ll be insufferable with his ‘I-told-you-so’s.”

“Yeah, we will,” said Louis, snickering. “The other boys, as well. I won’t be your dirty little secret.”

“No,” Liam agreed. “But, like... can I keep you to myself for a while?”

Louis moved slightly away from Liam so he could put his glasses back on. Then, he gave Liam a shy smile that Liam hadn’t seen yet and wanted _desperately_ to catch on camera. He said, “You can keep me as long as you want, Li.”

 

****

**Author's Note:**

> once again, a very happy birthday to my friend lauren, who has been putting up with my nonsense for over a year now. (wow!) i just love you a lot and really hope you had a fantastic day!
> 
> this literally could not have been possible without marcel. she's a cheerleader, a beta, and a mix-tape/manipulation maker all in one cute package!
> 
> thank you to allie, too, who organised this monster into something resembling an actual story, and was a complete sweetheart all the while.
> 
> and thanks to anyone who read this far! we did it, we climbed this whole mountain. <3


End file.
